30 August 2012, 11:33

Linux kernel to reach 4.0 in three to four years

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According to a blog posting by Sean Michael Kerner, Linus Torvalds has declared his intention to jump the version number of the Linux kernel up to 4.0 when the second version number of the current branch gets close to reaching "the 30s". At the current kernel development speed, Linux 3.29 would be released in the autumn of 2016.

Torvalds explained his decision in a question and answer session at the Linux Foundation's 2012 North American LinuxCon conference currently taking place in San Diego. The developer said that larger version numbers are harder to keep track of and that he prefers to jump up to the next higher major version when the numbers get too unwieldy for his taste. The kernel developers took a similar approach when they went to Linux 3.0 in July of last year. The current version of the kernel in development is Linux 3.6, which is expected to be released in the second half of September.

(fab)

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