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.