The Linux father, Linus Torvalds, has announced the release of Linux kernel 3.12 in the mailing lists and he also explains in details the reasons of the release delay. It was not the code, but the slow internet connection Linus was travelling with. Torvalds writes about driver reverts, auto-NUMA memory corruption fix series and tells us that none of it was really worth delaying 3.12 for.
Linux kernel 3.12:
– EXT4 file-system features
– AMD Berlin APU support
– A major CPU freq governor improvement
– New drivers
– Fixed Bugs
“I was vacillating whether to do an rc8 or just cut the final 3.12, but since the biggest reason to *not* do a final release was not so much the state of the code, as simply the fact that I’ll be travelling with very bad internet connection next week, I didn’t really want to delay the release. Sure, we had a number of driver reverts, and there was an annoying auto-NUMA memory corruption fix series, but none of it was
really worth delaying 3.12 for.”
What else did he write about?
The merge window for 3.13 is not opened yet and the reason for this is that the Linux father won’t have the needed bandwidth to work effectively, but the fact the merge is closed does not mean you can not send pull request. Linus explains that the merge window for 3.13 will start very soon and he will be very disappointed in anybody who then leaves their merge request until the end of that two-week merge window.
What else?
Linus does not want large numbers in the kernel version.What does that mean? “Onto a totally different topic: we’re getting to release numbers where I have to take off my socks to count that high again.”, he writes. It is very true! Who can remember all these numbers?! 2.x series had crazy numbers and Linus doesn’t want that to happen again, so he proposes to move to Linux 4.0 right after the Linux 3.19 release.
Do you guys remember Dirk Hohndel from LinuxCon EU? Dirk asked if they could do a release with just stability and bug-fixes. Linus has been mulling over this idea and is asking developers to go and hunt bugs. A release with no features but only fixes? What are you waiting? Go and hunt some bugs, Linus will be very happy!
