Greg K-H Recommends New Kernel Version Naming
Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux developer at Novell, suggests a new naming scheme for the Kernel releases on the Kernel mailing list. The four-digit year would be included in the name.
Kroah-Hartman writes that he had meant to bring up his suggestion at the Kernel Summit 2008 in September that he does now as a follow-up. He had always been involved with version numbering and finds the current scheme unmanageable.
His recommendation: future versions of the Linux kernel should follow the pattern four_digit_year.release_number.minor_release_number. By this pattern the first release in the coming year would be 2009.0.0, the second 2009.1.0, and so forth. If zero-numbered releases are undesirable, he says, the year could also begin with release 2009.1.1.
Kroah-Hartman points out that the naming scheme provides a better way to determine how old the release is. Kernel 2004.9.0 would be easier to date than Kernel 2.6.9.
The current scheme follows the pattern 2. major_release.minor_release.extra_version. With the new scheme, kernel macros with major and minor numbers would also have compatible naming so as not to break scripts, he assures the community in his email.
Among the first responses was one from H. Peter Anvin who found it easiest just to increment the last digit, such as 27, 28, 29, etc. He finds the existing prefix 2 with the large following digits to have "outlived its utility" and suggests bumping the version to 3.0 and maintaining that scheme for "huge changes."
Adrian Bunk had rather a different view and warned against radical changes that could affect not only the Kernel and its tools, but break countless userspace programs. Many of these programs interpret the kernel version number through calls such as uname -r. He gives a snippet from an OpenSSL library script as an example.
Comments
comments powered by DisqusSubscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
openSUSE Tumbleweed Ditches AppArmor for SELinux
If you're an openSUSE Tumbleweed user, you can expect a major change to the distribution.
-
Plasma 6.3 Now Available
Plasma desktop v6.3 has a couple of pretty nifty tricks up its sleeve.
-
LibreOffice 25.2 Has Arrived
If you've been hoping for a release that offers more UI customizations, you're in for a treat.
-
TuxCare Has a Big AlmaLinux 9 Announcement in Store
TuxCare announced it has successfully completed a Security Technical Implementation Guide for AlmaLinux OS 9.
-
First Release Candidate for Linux Kernel 6.14 Now Available
Linus Torvalds has officially released the first release candidate for kernel 6.14 and it includes over 500,000 lines of modified code, making for a small release.
-
System76 Refreshes Meerkat Mini PC
If you're looking for a small form factor PC powered by Linux, System76 has exactly what you need in the Meerkat mini PC.
-
Gnome 48 Alpha Ready for Testing
The latest Gnome desktop alpha is now available with plenty of new features and improvements.
-
Wine 10 Includes Plenty to Excite Users
With its latest release, Wine has the usual crop of bug fixes and improvements, along with some exciting new features.
-
Linux Kernel 6.13 Offers Improvements for AMD/Apple Users
The latest Linux kernel is now available, and it includes plenty of improvements, especially for those who use AMD or Apple-based systems.
-
Gnome 48 Debuts New Audio Player
To date, the audio player found within the Gnome desktop has been meh at best, but with the upcoming release that all changes.
Age of release
Even better would be YYYY.MM.1.
nice idea but,
most sensible out of all
Though I'm one of those who really thinks that changing now kernel versioning provides little to no gains.
To me it more and more sounds like lots of people are bothered by visibly smaller role kernel now is playing in the whole "Linux OS" thing. Seems like people want some shake up of kernel development to make their contributions look more significant.
I see the flame war starting...