Kernel 2.6.24 on its way to the next "Latest Stable"

By: Carsten Emde

Linux 2.6.24 is out! Why is this important for us?

Has your Linux enough mileage left?

Every new release of the Linux kernel is, of course, important. The 2.6.24 Linux kernel release, however, is especially important to us, since

• it incorporates high-resolution timer for x86/64, ARM, PowerPC and MIPS,
• will have production-quality Realtime-Preempt patches,
• its Realtime-Preempt patches will be stable and fully functional with every subsequent kvm-relase from kvm-59 onwards,
• it contains a number of important performance fixes such as improvements of the scheduler for SMP kernels,
  
• merging the 32- and 64-bit Intel architecture trees will facilitate this and future kernel development and, thus, contribute to stabilize the kernel and related Realtime-Preempt patches

             and last not least

• it is scheduled to become OSADL's next  "Latest Stable".

We have updated our Linux Realtime Road Map to reflect the upgrade changes introduced with Linux 2.6.24.

Get the details

As always, a complete list of the release changes is available in the original (6 MByte text file) changelog. In addition, Linux Weekly has a quick overview about the merged components, and Linux Kernel Newbies have a detailed description of the individual items that were modified, improved, added or removed. Overall, the 2.6.24 Linux kernel is breaking a number of records with more than 10,000 individual changesets, with an overall growth of nearly 300,000 lines of code, and with a total of 950 contributing developers. Its precursor, the 2.6.23 Linux kernel, saw about 6200 patches obtained from about 860 developers. If this is taken into consideration, the somewhat longer gestation period of the 2.6.24 release is not surprising at all.

And, the winner is ...

Thomas Gleixner did it again. While in 2.6.22 Thomas and his team at Linutronix reached the amazing #9 of the worldwide contributions to the kernel - more than Intel, Cisco, Oracle, Freescale and many others -, Thomas finally made it to #1 in kernel 2.6.24! Even under consideration that this top ranking is mainly related to the i386/x86_64 architecture merger Thomas initiated and carried out, this is a huge achievement that cannot be overestimated. Congratulations, Thomas!

(Data taken from this related LWN.net article)