Hello-World/Linux_useful_info_forDev_and_Admin at master · SRIKANTHSJ78/Hello-World · GitHub

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With the release of the 2.6 kernel in December of 2003,
the kernel developer community switched from the previous model of having a separate development and stable kernel branch,
and moved to a “stable only” branch model


The numbering of the kernel releases started out being 2.6.x,
where x was an incrementing number that changed on every release The value of the number has no meaning,
other than it is newer than the previous kernel release.

In July 2011, Linus Torvalds changed the version number to 3.x after the 2.6.39 kernel was released.
This was done because the higher numbers were starting to cause confusion among users

The change to the 3.x numbering series did not mean anything other than a change of the major release number,
again in April 2015 with the movement from the 3.19 release to the 4.0 release number


Stable kernel releases:
For example, the 4.9 kernel is released by Linus,
and then the stable kernel releases based on this kernel are numbered 4.9.1, 4.9.2, 4.9.3, and so on.
This sequence is usually shortened with the number “4.9.y” when referring to a stable kernel release tree.
Each stable kernel release tree is maintained by a single kernel developer,
who is responsible for picking the needed patches for the release, and doing the review/release process.

Stable kernels are maintained for as long as the current development cycle is happening.
After Linus releases a new kernel, the previous stable kernel release tree is stopped and users must move to the newer released kernel.


Long-Term Stable kernels
After a year of this new stable release process,
it was determined that many different users of Linux wanted a kernel to be supported for longer than just a few months.
Because of this, the Long Term Supported (LTS) kernel release came about.

The first LTS kernel was 2.6.16, released in 2006. Since then, a new LTS kernel has been picked once a year.
That kernel will be maintained by the kernel community for at least 2 years.

Currently the LTS kernels are the 4.4.y, 4.9.y, and 4.14.y releases, and a new kernel is released on average, once a week