On the one hand, anything that goes into a stable tree release must first be accepted into the mainline kernel and then backported. It’s hard to either prove or disprove this, and there are pro and con arguments for both, so it’s pretty much up to you to decide which you prefer. So, whenever you visit looking for the latest stable kernel, you should use the version that is in the Big Yellow Button that says “Latest Stable Kernel.”Īh, but now you may wonder - if both 4.15 and 4.14.16 are stable, then which one is more stable? Some people avoid using “.0” releases of kernel because they think a particular version is not stable enough until there is at least a “.1”. It is maintained and curated by Greg Kroah-Hartman. All fixes backported to stable releases must meet a set of important criteria before they are considered - and one of them is that they “must already exist in Linus’s tree.” There is a separate Git repository used for the purpose of maintaining backported bug fixes, and it is called the “ stable ” tree - because it is used to track previously released stable kernels. Once the bug is fixed in the mainline repository, it may then be applied to previously released kernels that are still maintained by the Kernel development community. The rule for bug fixes in the Linux Kernel is very straightforward: all fixes must first go into Linus’s tree. When Linus is convinced that the new kernel is ready to go, he makes the final release, and we call this release “stable” to indicate that it’s not a “release candidate.” Bug FixesĪs any kind of complex software written by imperfect human beings, each new version of the Linux kernel contains bugs, and those bugs require fixing. Usually, there are 7 weekly pre-releases, but that number routinely goes up to -rc8, and sometimes even up to -rc9 and above. Based on the feedback he receives during this cycle, Linus decides whether the final version is ready to go yet or not. Release Candidatesīefore each new kernel version is released, it goes through several “release candidate” cycles, which are used by developers to test and polish all the cool new features. We call this the “ mainline ” Linux tree. All bug fixes and new features are first collected and prepared by subsystem maintainers and then submitted to Linus Torvalds for inclusion into his own Linux tree, which is considered the “master” Git repository. We use the word “stable” for two different things here: as the name of the Git tree where the release originated, and as indicator of whether the kernel should be considered “stable” as in “production-ready.”ĭue to the distributed nature of Git, Linux development happens in a number of various forked repositories. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. we see that 4.15 is the latest stable kernel - but then in the table below, 4.14.16 is listed as “stable,” and 4.15 as “mainline.” Frustrating, eh? The page doesn’t really help clear up this confusion. Is it the brand new X.Y one, or the previous X.Y-1.Z one? Is the brand new kernel too new? Should you stick to the previous release? Almost every time Linus Torvalds releases a new mainline Linux kernel, there’s inevitable confusion about which kernel is the “stable” one now.
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