Kernel release status

[Posted October 2, 2002 by corbet]

The current development kernel is 2.5.40, released by Linus on October 1. Among the usual fixes and updates, it includes high memory support for User-mode Linux, the CPU frequency (power management) patches, more disk management thrashups from Al Viro, the in-kernel NUMA topology API, the removal of the task queue subsystem, an ISDN update, and an ARM update. Here's the long-format changelog with the details.

Linus announced 2.5.39 on September 27. The biggest change, perhaps, was the inclusion of the deadline I/O scheduler (covered in last week's LWN Kernel Page); this kernel also contained a bunch of XFS fixes, an SCTP update, a bunch of memory management work by Andrew Morton, Ingo Molnar's in-kernel symbolic oops dumper, some driver model work, and numerous other fixes and updates. The the long-format changelog is available.

Linus's pre-2.5.41 BitKeeper tree contains a big ALSA update (the source of some grumbling from Linus), Ingo Molnar's "workqueue" implementation (see below), and a relatively small number (as of this writing) of other fixes and updates.

Dave Jones jumped back into the prepatch business with 2.5.39-dj1, which contained a number of fixes from his tree. Dave evidently still has a substantial pile of fixes to push on to Linus, but has been busy.

After a long absence, Alan Cox has also started putting out development kernel prepatches again. 2.5.40-ac1 includes support for the Voyager architecture, a merge of the uClinux distribution, and a number of fixes.

The latest 2.5 status summary from Guillaume Boissiere is dated October 2.

The current stable kernel is 2.4.19. Marcelo released 2.4.20-pre8 seconds after last week's Kernel Page was posted; it included an IBM hotplug driver update, a couple of security fixes, an x86-64 update, and a number of other fixes.

The current prepatch from Alan Cox is 2.4.20-pre8-ac3. Alan's recent releases have contained quite a few fixes, but no major new work.