Kernel release status

The 2.6.37 kernel is out, released by Linus Torvalds on January 4. New features in 2.6.37 include ext4 scalability improvements, jump labels, "tiny preempt RCU", more BKL removal work, getting rid of barriers in the block subsystem, much of the Xen Dom0 support, fanotify has been re-enabled, and more. As always, see the KernelNewbies 2.6.37 page for lots more information. "As to the big picture, on the whole I think 2.6.37 has been fairly calm. That will likely change with the merge window, as I'm looking forward to getting the new RCU-based pathname lookup and similar exciting features. So enjoy the calm sanity while it lasts." While the merge window is theoretically open, Torvalds said that he will wait a bit before starting the process to "let 2.6.37 cool for a few days to try to encourage people to look at the release rather than go all crazy with newly merged features in the next tree".

While we were on our holiday break, 2.6.37-rc8 was released on December 28. "The -rc8 release shouldn't be all that exciting. The most noticeable is probably the fact that hopefully the 'blank screen' problem with intel graphics is fixed. But on the whole, it's all just a collection of random fixes all over." See the full changelog for all the details.

There have been no stable releases made in the last two weeks. The 2.6.34.8 and 2.6.32.28 longterm kernels along with the 2.6.36.3 stable kernel are in the review process at the time of this writing.