Biggest Kernel Release Ever

Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux kernel 4.9 stating that it's the biggest release ever. Torvalds wrote on the LKML mailing list, “I'm pretty sure this is the biggest release we've ever had, at least in number of commits.”

Linux 4.9 release comes with more than 22 million lines of code. “If you look at the number of lines changed, we've had bigger releases in the past, but they have tended to be due to specific issues (v4.2 got a lot of lines from the AMD GPU register definition files, for example, and we've had big reorganizations that caused a lot of lines in the past: v3.2 was big due to staging, v3.7 had the automated uapi header file disintegration, etc),” said  Torvalds, “In contrast, 4.9 is just big.”

Some of the most interesting features of Linux 4.9 include support for $5 Raspberry Pi Zero device. The release also comes with support for the Greybus driver subsystem, which was developed by Google for the now defunct modular phone concept Project Ara.

With Linux 4.9 out of way, the merge window for 4.10 is now open, but because of the holiday season, Torvalds warned developers to send their patches soon, because he will stop pulling on 23 December, and if he got “roped into xmas food prep, even that date might be questionable,” said Torvalds. “I suspect we all want a nice calm winter break, so if your stuff isn't ready to be merged early, the solution is to just not merge it yet at all, and wait for 4.11.”