this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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It does feel that way, but...
"Linux 4.20 was released on Sun, 23 Dec 2018"
About 5.5 years.
(6.9-4.2)/(2024-2018) = 0.45 "version increments" per year.
4.2/(2018-1991) = 0.15 "version increments" per year.
So, the pace of version increases in the past 6 years has been around triple the average from the previous 27 years, since Linux' first release.
I guess I can see why 6.9 would seem pretty dramatic for long-time Linux users.
I wonder whether development has actually accelerated, or if this is just a change in the approach to the release/versioning process.
Both.
Development has increased, but you should use your comparison from the last 2.6 release.
It stayed on 2.6.y for 8 years - that was where it got stable enough that there wasn’t some major milestone to use as a new marker for its update number
There are cool new features, but if it followed the old versioning scheme, we’d still be on 2.6 because it hasn’t (intentionally) broken the API between the kernel and userspace
Since version 4.0 the version numbers have nothing to do with changes and are strictly time based. Linux 5.0 happened after Linux 4.20 because Linus "ran out of hands and toes to count on", same thing with 6.0 after 5.19
Wait. He lost a finger or toe???
Edit: more seriously it’s been since 3.0 after being on 2.6 forever
It used to only get bumped after a major new feature update, but it was stable enough at 2.6 that it got stuck there for 8 years, so he switched to a different update number