A last look at the 4.4 stable series

Posted Feb 18, 2022 16:54 UTC (Fri) by BenHutchings (subscriber, #37955)
Parent article: A last look at the 4.4 stable series

> and became the first long-term-stable release to be supported for more than two years

This is not correct; 2.6.32, 3.2, 3.10, and 3.16 were also supported for 4-6 years. This was the first stable branch that Greg maintained for this long though.

I stand corrected

Posted Feb 18, 2022 21:05 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (2 responses)

You are right; somehow those efforts slipped my mind. My apologies, that was a significant community-support effort that deserves to be recognized.

I stand corrected

Posted Feb 21, 2022 13:09 UTC (Mon) by wtarreau (subscriber, #51152) [Link] (1 responses)

At least I think Ben and I will both agree that Greg's 4.4 has been of higher quality for users than the kernels we used to maintain ourselves. First it was released way more often, which eases reviewing and bisecting. Second, by being "official" (ours used to appear as "extended LTS") it was likely much more regarded by the entire community as a kernel to care about in backports. While Ben and I were often on our own when trying to backport some fixes to these older kernels, I observed more efforts generally speaking on 4.4 and the subsequent ones, which is great because it indicates that long-term stability is becoming something imporrtant for many developers. For me the current cycle is perfect, and the proof is that I no longer have to maintain one myself ;-) Big thanks to Greg for this!

I stand corrected

Posted Feb 21, 2022 21:29 UTC (Mon) by BenHutchings (subscriber, #37955) [Link]

Yes, I agree with all of that. I'm much happier being a contributor to the newer LTS branches than being a maintainer.