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Linus Renames 2.6.40 Kernel To Linux 3.0, Announces Release Candidate

Posted by timothy on from the thanks-linus dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Linus just released the first -rc of the next kernel series, but rather than continuing development as the Linux 2.6.40 kernel, he has renamed it to be the Linux 3.0 kernel." And he's tacked on a second dot and another zero (3.0.0), at least for now, because many scripts expect and rely on a three-part kernel version.

4 of 378 comments (clear)

  1. The problem with incremental version numbers by isorox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There's never been a large enough jump in features to justify a major release increment, yet 2.6.40 is more distinct from 2.6.0 than 2.6.0 was from 2.0.0

    1. Re:The problem with incremental version numbers by Tar-Alcarin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There's never been a large enough jump in features to justify a major release increment, yet 2.6.40 is more distinct from 2.6.0 than 2.6.0 was from 2.0.0

      I think that's part of the reasoning behind this; it's just time to reset the bar.
      If you have hardware or software that advertises itself as being "linux 2.6 compliant" today, it could still be up to 7 years old, and not give a damn about features added since then.

  2. Re:Really? That's important ? by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, 2.6.40 + 0.3.60 = 2.9.100

    I think he meant 1.-6.-40 more advanced.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  3. Re:This gives the impression that 2.6.40 is more by jareth-0205 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But I guess the marketing mentality somehow, somewhere, has taken over.

    Hardly. It was already broken, the "2.6" part of the number was completely irrelevant, and whereas it might not bother you, if you're talking about version numbers all day every day, having superfluous data in there will get annoying. So yeah, the "upgrade" is misleading but from now on the version bumps more accurately reflect the scale of change in the kernel.

    Anyway, who markets the kernel? Distros are marketed, nobody cares about the kernel who doesn't already know what's going on.

    This is far more a case of developers wanting a version number system that makes sense to the current kernel development model than anything else.