Today, the kernel development team has release the stable version of the kernel 2.6.32. This version should include a lot of bug fixes, improvements and added functionality and drivers. Like usual, when there is a kernel release, I also do a kernel package release, which in this case is called “final“, as its a major and stable release of a new kernel tree, 2 6.32. I’m not gonna talk too much about the this kernel release, but I will talk about the package which includes this kernel. To find what actually has changed in this kernel version, I would recommend all of you to read the change log from http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.32.

One major, or important patch to this kernel build is ureadahead (über-readahead), which also is included in Ubuntu 9.10 kernel and OS. If you didn’t know, Ubuntu has moved away from sreadahead in favor of ureadahead, but the patch was only for kernel 2.6.31. Other important add-on’s are, acerhdf kernel module (0.5.20) for Acer Aspire One netbook fan control, coretemp support for Intel Atom processor, but this time I haven’t patch it myself, as it is fixed within the kernel module and a custom kernel configuration for a much more responsive and stable system.

Also, Selinux and Apparmor are removed, plus a lot of hacking option from the kernel. This should make the kernel itself smaller, more responsive and faster, but my tests are limited to 2 laptops/desktops, so I will need you guys to test and play with this kernel build to see how is holding up.

To install this new kernel packages, you need to use dpkg and of course to download at least linux-image-2.6.32-final_1_i386.deb package from http://dl.robertalks.com/kernel/2.6.32-final/ (US/CA) or http://mirror.visualserver.org/kernel/2.6.32-final/ (CZ) and if you are thinking of building you own kernel, maybe for a different Linux distribution or just because you want to, you can download the source code and kernel config file from http://dl.robertalks.com/kernel/source/ (US/CA) or http://mirror.visualserver.org/kernel/source/ (CZ).

Update: The debian package were rebuild using an older version of libc6, which will allow users with older version of Ubuntu/Debian to use this kernel.

Update: I’ve build a new kernel 2.6.32 named final-union with unionfs file system support. Can be found in the same place and if you need or use unionfs that you should download the packages. If not, the just ignore this update.