Kernel release status [LWN.net]

The 4.17 kernel was released on June 3; Linus noted in the announcement that he is resisting the temptation to change the major number for now: "No, I didn't call it 5.0, even though all the git object count numerology was in place for that. It will happen in the not _too_ distant future, and I'm told all the release scripts on kernel.org are ready for it, but I didn't feel there was any real reason for it."

Headline features in this release include improved load estimation in the CPU scheduler, raw BPF tracepoints, lazytime support in the XFS filesystem, full in-kernel TLS protocol support, histogram triggers for tracing, mitigations for the latest Spectre variants, and, of course, the removal of support for eight unloved processor architectures.

Stable updates: 4.16.14, 4.14.48, and 4.9.106 were released on June 5. The 4.9.107 and 4.4.136 updates are in the review process; they are due on June 7.