No 2.7 Linux Kernel Branch Due Soon

An anonymous reader writes "At the fourth annual Linux Kernel Developers Summit, it was decided that there won't be a 2.7 Linux kernel development branch any time soon. Instead, Linux creator Linus Torvalds and the official 2.6 maintainer Andrew Morton have decided to continue working as a team, further enhancing the 2.6 kernel. Up to this point, kernels ending in an odd number (2.1, 2.3, 2.5, etc) were considered development kernels, and kernels ending in an even number (2.2, 2.4, 2.6, etc) were considered stable kernels. However, according to this KernelTrap article, active development will now continue in the mainline 2.6 tree, and the final stabilization will be left up to the companies that provide Linux distributions."

Comments

This is bad.

[dangermen]

This is bad. Not all distribution maintainers have armies of patch people. This will push people to one of a few distributions such as RedHat or Suse. Espcially if 2.6 becomes an unstable piece of crap.

Lessons Learned from 2.4

[4of12]

Even "production" kernels can have problems. Remember the VM changes around 2.4.10?

New productions kernels deserve every developer's full attention until they're really really ready.

Re:Oh dear...

[ZorroXXX]

Come on. No major distributions except Slackware ships with a plain vanilla kernel. "All" distributions patch their kernel (based on a stable relase) more or less heavily, sometimes resulting in problems, see for example here or here.

So with development continuing longer on the 2.6 branch it might help decreasing the diversety of the different vendor kernels. At least it is worth trying.

Chill.

[thecombatwombat]

To everyone saying this will kill the independent distro, chill.

If you were going to make a new distro right now, in my opinion you'd be better off starting with Fedora or Progeny's Componetized Linux or vanilla Debian or something as it is, stand on some shoulders people. Linus and his crew produce a kernel, not an operating system, I'm sure they're doing this to produce the best kernel they can, not because they hate you.

Like other people said, 2.4 had so many changes go in during it's "stable" life, maybe their just trying to be realistic and make 2.6 actually be more stable than 2.4 this way?

Re:Very true

[turgid]

What scares me is that "the community" is no longer going to aim to produce a stable kernel, but rather, it will be up to the commercial distributors. This goes against the whole idea of Free Software. The idea is to make a working, useful product, not half-baked cripple-ware that you then have to pay someone to fix. I understand the concept of paying other people to "add value" i.e. enhanced features, but I don't regard stability as an "enhanced feature." A lot of people who don't alread run Linux (but maybe Windows) will now have one less reason to change and one more piece of FUD to beat the Free and Open Source Software movement with.

I'm a Slakware man myself, but I don't like sitting around waiting for Patrick to make a new kernel. I like to update my kernel myself from the official Linus tarball as and when required. This will no longer be possible.

Don't Panic! This is not a big deal (really).

[leinhos]

It seems to me that everyone is assuming that there will never be a 2.7 tree. From the article, the simply quote Jonathan Corbet as saying that "2.7 will only be created when it becomes clear that there are sufficient patches which are truly disruptive enough to require it. When 2.7 *is* created, it could be highly experimental, and may turn out to be a throwaway tree."

They are just concentrating on the stable branch for now, and collecting a patch set (Andrew Morton's -mm patch set, that is) as a testing ground for proposed (stable) kernel changes.

This really doesn't seem like a big deal, and it implies that the kernel people will focusing on stability for the time being.