20. 2.6.16 and 2.4.35: does anyone care?

For the stability-minded people (remember, the Linux kernel does not have a stable API), it was established that 2.6.16 will be the stable kernel for 2 or 3 years. Still, no stable API/ABI for external modules!

The 2.4 kernel has a stable version in 2.4.34, maintained by Willy Tarreau. More than three years ago, Marcelo Tosatti (the 2.4 maintainer at the time) said that after 2.4.24 is released, the 2.4 kernel will go into maintenance mode, but changes continued to appear. Ironically, the 2.4 kernel is still used by the recently released Debian Etch, and Slackware 11.0 is the last Slackware release to have it by default (the next release will completely drop the support for 2.4).

Some people seem to still care about 2.4. Is anyone caring of the long-term supported 2.6.16? I am afraid not: RHEL5 shipped with 2.6.18 (and will stick to it for 7 years), Debian Etch has chosen 2.6.18 too.

How expressive for the good coordination between the major distributions and the kernel team!