Kernel release status

The current development kernel is 2.5.51, which was released by Linus on December 9. It's a huge patch containing several hundred changesets; some of the more significant changes include a big frame buffer device merge, some memory management performance improvements, an ACPI update, various architecture updates (PPC64, S/390, x86-64, SPARC64), a reorganization of the AGP code, a Linux Security Module update, the addition of the Twofish and Serpent crypto algorithms, a new system call restart mechanism (see below), an XFS update, more driver model work, more loadable module fixes, and a long list of other fixes and updates. The long-format changelog has the details.

The current 2.5 Status Summary from Guillaume Boissiere is dated December 10. Dave Jones has released a new version of his 2.5 Changes Document, which is a comprehensive look at what has changed in this development series.

The current stable kernel is 2.4.20. Marcelo started the 2.4.21 process on December 10 with the first 2.4.21 prepatch. It includes a bunch of new IDE code, a number of driver updates, a Summit chipset support update, and, of course, a fix for the data=journal ext3 corruption bug (see below). "Test it carefully, since the new IDE code is not yet fully tested. Do not use it with critical data."

Alan Cox has released 2.4.20-ac2, which adds a number of fixes (some backported from 2.5) to the 2.4.20 kernel.

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