With better security, improved ARM support, and, oh yes, better gaming hardware support, Linux 4.6 is a major update.
You won’t find the biggest news about the latest Linux kernel release, 4.6, in its release notes. There’s been a major improvement in Linux’s security.
The Linux Foundation
Greg Kroah-Hartman, maintainer of the Linux kernel’s stable branch, explained in aLinux.com interview that Linux is being hardened against potential security bugs. In 4.6, the biggest example of this is that it has “write-only protection to all the data structures. If a bug happens where you would normally be able to overwrite a portion of memory, now with the added protections in place, you aren’t allowed to do that so the bug does not cause any additional ‘harm.'”
This is part of an overall refocusing of Linux developers on security issues. While Linux has never been as full of security holes as Windows, it’s also far from perfect.
In a Google+ post, Kroah-Hartman wrote, “The real reason we are doing more kernel security work these days is thanks to the great efforts of Konstantin Ryabitsev and Kees Cook over the past year, educating stubborn kernel developers about why these things are worth it. Many thanks to their work for hitting us over the head until we got it through our thick skulls.”