Linus Renames 2.6.40 Kernel To Linux 3.0, Announces Release Candidate

An anonymous reader writes "Linus just released the first -rc of the next kernel series, but rather than continuing development as the Linux 2.6.40 kernel, he has renamed it to be the Linux 3.0 kernel." And he's tacked on a second dot and another zero (3.0.0), at least for now, because many scripts expect and rely on a three-part kernel version.

The problem with incremental version numbers

[isorox]

There's never been a large enough jump in features to justify a major release increment, yet 2.6.40 is more distinct from 2.6.0 than 2.6.0 was from 2.0.0

Sigh.

[Rennt]

He really went and did it, eh? Crap. The only thing more annoying then a meaningless bump in version numbers is all the people going to be complaining about how annoying it is.

Re:Sigh.

[bunratty]

There's one more thing worse: the people who complain about how annoying the people who complain about the meaningless bump in version numbers are. Boy those guys are real jerks!

Re:Really? That's important ?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

No, 2.6.40 + 0.3.60 = 2.9.100

I think he meant 1.-6.-40 more advanced.

Re:The problem with incremental version numbers

[Tar-Alcarin]

There's never been a large enough jump in features to justify a major release increment, yet 2.6.40 is more distinct from 2.6.0 than 2.6.0 was from 2.0.0

I think that's part of the reasoning behind this; it's just time to reset the bar.
If you have hardware or software that advertises itself as being "linux 2.6 compliant" today, it could still be up to 7 years old, and not give a damn about features added since then.

Odd version numbers

[OoberMick]

My understanding is that the jump to 3.0 is simply that they no longer want to have the second digit even means stable and odd means unstable versioning any more. So rather than going to 2.7.0 and having everyone assume it's unstable or skipping 2.7.0 and going straight to 2.8.0 just to maintain an old and unused version system, they have went with 3.0.

Re:This gives the impression that 2.6.40 is more

[jareth-0205]

But I guess the marketing mentality somehow, somewhere, has taken over.

Hardly. It was already broken, the "2.6" part of the number was completely irrelevant, and whereas it might not bother you, if you're talking about version numbers all day every day, having superfluous data in there will get annoying. So yeah, the "upgrade" is misleading but from now on the version bumps more accurately reflect the scale of change in the kernel.

Anyway, who markets the kernel? Distros are marketed, nobody cares about the kernel who doesn't already know what's going on.

This is far more a case of developers wanting a version number system that makes sense to the current kernel development model than anything else.

Re:When new numbers meant new features

[jareth-0205]

Now the 3.0 Linux branch is just plain about shiny numbering.

Yup, and is all the better for it. What you don't mention in your list is the fact that the development model changed in 2.6, from a break-> stabilise->break-> stabilise model to one of continuous stable development. The version number system stayed the same, which suggests the same development process of stabilisation with no new features, so this is a newer system that fixes that.

About damn time

[spectro]

I could never understand what is with all these digits in version numbers. If it was up to me the kernel would be in version 8.x or 9.x already.

What's with open source and all these version numbers starting with 0.x?. Why are they so afraid of just a freaking number? I've been using mythtv for about 10 years and they just released version 0.24.1 *facepalm*

Linus just realized that version numbers are about marketing more than anything else. Microsoft has been doing this for decades. I should buy me some redhat stock.

Re:Really? That's important ?

[aBaldrich]

I prefer to read in well-written English, rather than see them bastardize my mother tongue.