Linux Kernel 3.14 Series Has Reached End of Life (softpedia.com)

Slashdot reader prisoninmate quotes an article on Softpedia: it looks like the Linux kernel maintainers decided that there's no need to maintain the Linux kernel 3.14 LTS series anymore, so earlier today, September 11, 2016, they decided to release that last maintenance update, version 3.14.79, and mark the series as EOL (End of Life). Famous Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman was the one to make the big announcement, and he's urging users who want to still run a long-term supported kernel version to move to the Linux 4.4 LTS series, which is currently the most advanced LTS branch, or use the latest stable release, Linux kernel 4.7.3...

Linux kernel 3.14.79 is a very small update that changes a total of 12 files, with 45 insertions and 17 deletions, thus fixing a bug in the EXT4 file system, a networking issue related to the Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) protocol, and updating a few HID, s390, SCSI, networking drivers.

Comments

Re:More reasons to use Windows instead of Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

At least with Windows, you know how long your OS is going to be maintained for. They don't just randomly decide that they're done issuing updates and discontinue it. Besides, each version of Windows is maintained longer than Linux, which is another plus. And unlike Linux, Windows still supports old hardware like 32 bit systems. There's no reason to replace a system that's working just fine, but that's what your forced to do when developers just randomly decide that it's time to stop maintaining a version of Linux.

As a longtime Linux user, it would make me very happy if you (and everyone else who thinks like you do) would stay on Windows.

Beating Microsoft at the desktop game is a puerile pissing contest that I don't care about. However I do care about interacting with a community of users who can understand the most basic and easily Googled things, such as the ease with which the Linux kernel can be used on a 32-bit system. See how that works?

I agree with Alvinrod that you are probably a troll, but who knows? There are plenty of stupid people who might say such things in all seriousness.

Re:LTR isn't all that long

[Opportunist]

If you pay it, they will come.

I hope I don't give away a trade secret here, but there are actually companies that took it upon themselves to add years to the LTS. RHEL 5 LTS EOL will be in March 2017, RHEL 6 in November 2020. Those are Kernel 2.6 systems, and we're still talking about patches that add support for new hardware on top of security fixes. Support for security patches only (i.e. no added support for new hardware, pretty much where you're already with pretty much all non-current Windows versions) will end in November 2020 for RHEL 5. We don't know yet when RHEL 6 will reach this final EOL, but expect it for June 2024.