How to : Update Linux Kernel 4.8 RC2 on Linux Mint 18 and Ubuntu 16.04

Linux kernel 4.8 (RC2) was released, how to update / upgrade on Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus, Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf, Ubuntu 15.04 vivid Vervet, ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn, Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr (LTS), Ubuntu 13.10/13.04/12.04, Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca, Linux Mint 17 Qiana, Linux Mint 13 Maya, Pinguy OS 14.04, Elementary OS 0.3 Freya, Elementary OS 0.2 Luna, Peppermint Five, Deepin 2014, LXLE 14.04

Linux kernel is the essential part of any Linux operating system. It is responsible for resource allocation, low-level hardware interfaces, security, simple communications, basic file system management, and more. Written from scratch by Linus Torvalds (with help from various developers), Linux is a clone of the UNIX operating system. It is geared towards POSIX and Single UNIX Specification compliances.

Includes powerful features
Linux provides users with powerful features, such as true multitasking, multistack networking, shared copy-on-write executables, shared libraries, demand loading, virtual memory, and proper memory management.

Initially designed only for 386/486-based computers, now Linux supports a wide range of architectures, including 64-bit (IA64, AMD64), ARM, ARM64, DEC Alpha, MIPS, SUN Sparc, PowerPC, as well as Amiga and Atari machines.

The diffstat for rc2 looks unusual, in that only about 1/6th is drivers (normally drivers account for about half the bulk of the updates). Instead, it’s dominated by arch updates, and fs/ and mm/. But that’s most likely just because the fixes to the bigger driver areas haven’t started trickling in yet – rc2 tends to be a quiet period after the craziness that is the merge window.

And the reason mm/ stands out is mainly just because of a pull request from the merge window that I had delayed until after rc1 in order to look more at it.

So I expect that things will be back to normal this upcoming week.

Nothing really strange seems to be going on, so please just go out and test it and report any problems you encounter. It’s obviously fairly early in the rc series, but I don’t think there was anything particularly worrisome this merge window, so don’t be shy..

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