After announcing the release of the first update of the Linux 4.6 kernel series, Greg Kroah-Hartman informed the community about the availability of the sixth maintenance build in the Linux 4.5 kernel branch.
Linux kernel 4.5.6 is now available for select GNU/Linux operating systems that have already adopted a kernel from the Linux 4.5 series, which many popular distributions have, including, but not limited to Arch Linux, openSUSE Tumbleweed, Gentoo Linux, Birds Linux, Webconverger, Sabayon, Fedora, Slackware, and Debian.
According to the diff from the previous maintenance release, version 4.5.5, it looks like Linux kernel 4.5.6 contains changes for a total of 97 files, with 1,179 insertions and 473 deletions. From the appended shortlog, the main attractions are improvements to the AArch64 (ARM 64-bit), x86, MIPS, and ARM instruction set architectures, and fixes to the CIFS and HPFS filesystems.
"I'm announcing the release of the 4.5.6 kernel. All users of the 4.5 kernel series must upgrade," said Greg Kroah-Hartman. "The updated 4.5.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.5.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git;a=summary."
Numerous drivers were updated
As expected, Linux kernel 4.5.6 brings numerous updated drivers, for things like USB, Watchdog, MMC, TTY, SCSI, MTD, NFC, Thunderbolt, Crypto, InfiniBand, IRQ Chip, MCB, and MFD. There's also a patch for a Realtek sound driver, as well as a few core kernel changes. Linux kernel 4.5.6 is a recommended update for anyone using a GNU/Linux operating system powered by a kernel from the Linux 4.5 series.
OS vendors and kernel maintainers of various GNU/Linux distributions are urged to download the Linux kernel 4.5.6 sources right now via our website or from the kernel.org, compile it and optimize it for their platforms, and then release it to the stable repositories for users to update as soon as possible.
