Linus Torvalds Says Linux Kernel v5.0 'Should Be Meaningless' (betanews.com)

Posted by msmash on Monday April 16, 2018 @02:12AM from the how-about-that dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Following the release of Linux kernel 4.16, Linus Torvalds has said that the next kernel will be version 5.0. Or maybe it won't, because version numbers are meaningless. The announcement -- of sorts -- came in Torvalds' message over the weekend about the first release candidate for version 4.17. He warns that it is not "shaping up to be a particularly big release" and questions whether it even matters what version number is slapped on the final release. He says that "v5.0 will happen some day. And it should be meaningless. You have been warned." That's not to say that Linux kernel v5.0 -- or whatever it ends up being called -- will not be significant. With the removal of old architecture and other bits of tidying up, with v4.17 RC1 there were more lines of code removed than added: something described as "probably a first. Ever. In the history of the universe. Or at least kernel releases."

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Look, we all know where this is going by johannesg · 2018-04-16 02:51 · Score: 3, Funny

As demonstrated by both Apple (with their OS X, but no OS XI) and Microsoft (with their Windows 10, but no Windows 11), ten is just the highest number an OS can have. Linus is just preparing for the day when Linux, too, reaches its final version number.