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Kernel release status

The current development kernel is 2.6.0-test10, finally released by Linus on November 23. This patch contains a month's worth of accumulated fixes for serious bugs, and not a whole lot else. Linus notes that there is still a problem associated with preemption out there; the kernel preemption code itself is likely not at fault, but some subsystem or driver out there somewhere is not being entirely preempt-safe. That problem had not been tracked down as of this writing.

The long-format changelog contains the details for the patches incorporated in this release.

Incidentally, -test10 has been dubbed the "stoned beaver" release.

Linus also laid out his thinking for the future:

I'm planning/hoping on basically turning this over to Andrew, and let him decide to make the final 2.6.0 or not. Timing-wise Andrew is apparently going to be off for a few weeks, so regardless of whether this turns out to be rock solid or not, we'll have a few weeks of final testing before that were to happen. Which means that I might still end up making a test11 if Andrew hasn't come back and we find something that warrants it.

Linus's BitKeeper tree holds a small number of additional fixes.

The current stable kernel is 2.4.22, but its time is coming to an end. Marcelo released 2.4.23-rc3 on November 21, with the idea that it would become the final release. Reality dictated otherwise, with the result that 2.4.23-rc4 came out on the 24th, and 2.4.23-rc5 on the 25th. The idea, of course, is that this one will become the final release; stay tuned.


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