While still not marked as “longterm” on the kernel.org website, the Linux 4.9 kernel series recently become LTS (Long Term Support), which means that it will be supported with security patches for a couple of years. It also means that OS vendors need to adopt the Linux 4.9 kernel series for their distros as soon as possible. Arch Linux and Solus are already powered by Linux kernel 4.9, so make sure you update your PCs right now. As for Linux kernel 4.9.7, it comes one week after the release of Linux kernel 4.9.6 and changes a total of 67 files, with 534 insertions and 239 deletions, according to the appended shortlog. The patch includes mostly updated drivers, in particular for the Intel i915 graphics driver, but also for things like InfiniBand, Radeon, VC4, ISDN, I2C, PINCTRL, Virtio, FBDEV, and networking.