Posted: . At: 11:22 AM. This was 13 years ago. Post ID: 1443
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New version numbers for Linux Kernel.

Linus Torvalds has announced that the Linux kernel will make the jump from the 2.6 series to the 2.8.0 kernel. Does this mean that there will be no 2.7.0 kernel release? I guess so, there was 2.4, 2.5 and the current 2.6.x series, now they will make the jump over 2.7 to a 2.8.0 series. Greg Kroah-Hartman had proposed a new numbering system for Linux kernel versioning that would be a Linux 2009.0.0 or a similar Linux Kernel versioning system. This would show the age of the kernel instead of the existing Linux Kernel numbering system that does not mean as much to the uninitiated. The Linux kernel is making it`s ay to the 40th release in the seven years it has been in development. This seems like a nice round number to end the series and start anew with 2.8.0 and a whole new set of features. I can not wait to download the 2.6.40-rc1 tarball and see what new features they have added. The new set of features included in the 2.6.40 kernel are Sandy Bridge performance optimizations, new Intel Ivy Bridge support, graphics support fixes, a form of NVIDIA Optimus and many other features that are set to be revealed as the release of 2.6.40-rc1 or 2.8.0 is released. Linus Torvalds has also thought about changing the version number to 3.0, and not 3.0.0 I guess this would follow on quite nicely from 2.6.39 and then future releases would be 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 and so on, with the third version number, such as 3.0.1 would denote the stable point release. The versions would not consist of both odd and even numbers. With the release of the 3.40 kernel, this would mark the move to the 4.0 kernel release and then it would be 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 et cetera. This is just a change of numbering after all and the Kernel source code will still be the same high quality it has always been.

The only problem is that if your Linux system has user space scripts that look for the 2.6.x string identifying the kernel and you install a 2.4.0 kernel, then they would be broken, but you can just use uname -r to show the kernel version you have installed and not hardcode the string you are expecting. I look forward to this and can not wait to try the new hardware support in the latest releases. I have 2.6.39 right now and I am about to compile this kernel and see if I can get my SAA7134 DVB card working. That card is working fine in Windows 7 but I can not get the DVB tuner component of the card to work in Linux, I have managed to find a couple of Digital channels, but I can not actually watch them. Kaffeine will not find any channels when I try to tune in the digital tuner.

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