We had already been announcing it for a few weeks and It has finally arrived. The Linux kernel in its version 4.12 is already released in its final version. This kernel update brings quite a lot of new features, considering it to be quite an important update.
Its development has had 7 candidate versions, versions in which this Kernel was tested and modified little by little. It was speculated that 8 would be needed, but in the end with 7 versions it has been more than enough to guarantee stability and good operation.
In this new version, Added support for the new AMD Radeon RX Vega graphics, in addition to adding compatibility with the Nvidia GTX 1000 "Pascal". In addition, the operation of RAID storage systems has been improved and support has been added for the "thermal" driver for Raspberry Pi (the one that only turns off the computer when it is very hot to avoid damage).
In addition, compatibility has been improved with EXT4, F2FS, and XFS file systems, adding among other things the support with the system call (ioct) GETFSMAPS. Finally, the drivers have been updated, security has been improved, bugs detected in previous versions have been corrected and stability has been improved.
This converts to Kernel 4.12 in the most advanced to date, with important news at the level of an LTS update, although it is not the case. For this reason, Linux users are sure to appreciate this update.
Although this is a final version, not quite stable yet. As a precaution, the creators of the kernel do not rate it as stable until the first maintenance release (4.12.1 in this case). In this way, users can thoroughly test the system for errors and not compromise the stability of the operating systems. What's more, a while ago to Linux missed a bug in Kernel 4.8 and it had consequences.
In this way, you can download it and try it through your repositories or Kernel.org, but I don't recommend using it in work environments until the first maintenance release.