Kernel release status [LWN.net]

The 3.0 kernel is out, released on July 21. Linus said:

As already mentioned several times, there are no special landmark features or incompatibilities related to the version number change, it's simply a way to drop an inconvenient numbering system in honor of twenty years of Linux. In fact, the 3.0 merge window was calmer than most, and apart from some excitement from RCU I'd have called it really smooth.

Beyond the numbering scheme change, this kernel includes POSIX alarm timer support, a just-in-time compiler for BPF packet filters, a new sendmmsg() system call, ICMP sockets, the merging of the Xen backend driver (completing the long process of getting Xen Dom0 support into the kernel), namespace file descriptors, and more. See the KernelNewbies 3.0 page for lots of details.

Stable updates: no stable updates have been released in the last week. The 2.6.35.14 update is in the review process as of this writing.

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Retro-reason for 3.0

Posted Jul 28, 2011 10:12 UTC (Thu) by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033) [Link]

Something very significant did happen just before the number change. The big kernel lock went away. Given the amount of time it took to make it disappear, I'm surprised this wasn't used as the reason that the kernel major version is now 3.

Is there anything else that almost everyone agrees needs to be fixed, and everyone knows will be a long haul? That should be the target for 4.0.

Retro-reason for 3.0

Posted Jul 28, 2011 11:12 UTC (Thu) by roblucid (subscriber, #48964) [Link]

Yes, but ... agreeing something should be fixed, doesn't mean there's agreement on how to fix it! :)

Look at all the steam that's arisen out of "interactivity" VM paging & OOM killing issues for instance.