Linux kernel version history
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This article documents the version history of the Linux kernel, a free, open-source, and Unix-like kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide.
Since the Linux kernel's creation by Linus Torvalds in 1991, it grew rapidly as many developers contributed to the project.
The kernel became self-hosting as of version 0.11 in December 1991. Linux 1.0.0 was released in March 1994, consisting of over 170,000 lines of source code.
The most recent stable release of the Linux kernel is 7.0, released on 12 April 2026.
Explanation
In contrast to semantic versioning, the major version carries no intrinsic meaning for the kernel, as Linux promises stable interfaces and behavior even across major versions. Rather, since version 3.x, minor versions are capped around 20, to avoid the false perception that changes between large minor versions (e.g. from X.30 to X.31) would be smaller than changes between X.1 and X.2.
Each feature release – identified by the first two numbers of a release version – is designated one of the following levels of support:
- Supported until next stable version and 3 months after that
- Long-term support (LTS); maintained for a few years
- Super-long-term support (SLTS); maintained for many more years by the Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP)
Overview
Releases 7.x.y
On 8 February 2026 Linus Torvalds announced that the next kernel release will be published as version 7.0. Following the usual release cycle of about two months for every new version, kernel 7.0 was released on 12 April 2026.
| Version | Original release date | Last release | Maintainer | EOL | Prominent features | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Latest version: 7.0 | 12 April 2026 | 7.0 |
Releases 6.x.y
| Version | Original release date | Last release | Maintainer | EOL | Prominent features | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Latest version: 6.19 | 8 February 2026 | 6.19.12 | Linus Torvalds | |||
| Supported: 6.18 | 30 November 2025 | 6.18.13 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | December 2028 | Improved kernel memory allocation performance with slub sheaves A device mapper target for persistent cache Process Namespaces as file handles Support for Accurate Explicit Congestion Notification in TCP Add support for PSP encryption of TCP connections Better swapping performance UDP receive performance improvements BPF signed programs More scalable NFS servers by removing caching Introduction of memdesc_flags_t, for a future leaner struct page Remove bcachefs core code | 26th LTS release |
| Unsupported: 6.17 | 28 September 2025 | 6.17.13 | 18 December 2025 | Easier CPU bug mitigation selection New file_getattr/file_setattr system calls Better and more secure core dumping Initial priority inheritance support for solving priority inversion Unconditionally compile task scheduler with SMP support Per NUMA node proactive reclaim, for better control of memory reclaim on NUMA systems Introduce a new fallocate(2) flag, for more efficient writing of zeroes Runtime Verification: Support for Linear temporal logic monitors Change bcachefs status from 'Supported' to 'Externally maintained' | ||
| Unsupported: 6.16 | 27 July 2025 | 6.16.12 | 12 October 2025 | XFS support for large atomic writes USB audio offload support Initial support for Intel Trusted Domain Extensions Allow to zero-copy send TCP payloads from DMABUF memory Automatic weighted interleaved memory allocation policy Support for Intel Advanced Performance Extensions Add support for sending coredumps over an AF_UNIX socket Futex improvements Some Ext4 performance improvements Build optimization for the local CPU on x86 | ||
| Unsupported: 6.15 | 25 May 2025 | 6.15.11 | 20 August 2025 | Btrfs: fast Zstd compression support | ||
| Unsupported: 6.14 | 24 March 2025 | 6.14.11 | 10 June 2025 | Improved Wine speed Copilot keyboard key support | ||
| Unsupported: 6.13 | 20 January 2025 | 6.13.12 | 20 April 2025 | New handheld support Intel Arc B series support | ||
| Supported: 6.12 | 17 November 2024 | 6.12.80 | December 2028 | Real-time support for x86/x86_64, RISC-V, and ARM64 Userspace scheduler extensions support QR codes for DRM panic messages | 25th LTS release 5th SLTS with 10 years of support through 2035. Used in Debian 13 "Trixie" and RHEL 10.0 | |
| Unsupported: 6.11 | 15 September 2024 | 6.11.11 | 5 December 2024 | Atomic writes support for buffered I/O Dedicated bucket slab allocator to help protect against heap spraying vDSO implementation of getrandom() | ||
| Unsupported: 6.10 | 14 July 2024 | 6.10.14 | Greg Kroah-Hartman & Sasha Levin | 10 October 2024 | Memory-allocation profiling Encrypted interactions with trusted platform modules | Named "Baby Opossum Posse"The one last minute change was made in the credits of the ReiserFS README as requested by the original developer. |
| Unsupported: 6.9 | 12 May 2024 | 6.9.10 | 27 July 2024 | Improved performance for Intel Core Ultra (Meteor Lake) Support for AMD P-State Preferred Cores Intel FRED (Flexible Return Event Delivery) Support for larger console frame-buffer fonts for 4K displays Faster boot times for systems with lots of RAM and using HugeTLBs DM VDO (Device Mapper Virtual Data Optimizer) mainlined Hibernate LZ4 compression support | ||
| Unsupported: 6.8 | 10 March 2024 | 6.8.12 | 30 May 2024 | Deadline servers for better realtime scheduling Multi-size transparent huge pages for anonymous memory Two new syscalls for better mount management: listmount() and statmount() Data type profiling with perf Forbid users from writing to partitions used by filesystems New system calls to deal with multiple stacked LSMs Driver for new Intel Xe graphics | Used in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS | |
| Unsupported: 6.7 | 7 January 2024 | 6.7.12 | 3 April 2024 | Initial Bcachefs filesystem support Itanium support removed Intel Meteor Lake Graphics declared stable Initial Nouveau support for Nvidia GSP firmware Ability to disable IA-32 support at boot time on AMD64 Expansion of AMD Seamless Boot Support Improvement in loading of x86 microcode Support for RAID stripe tree, simple quota accounting, and temporary FSID added to Btrfs JFS minor stability improvements | According to Linus Torvalds, "one of the largest kernel releases we've ever had" | |
| Supported: 6.6 | 29 October 2023 | 6.6.127 | December 2027 | The new EEVDF process scheduler was merged. It aims to replace the CFS scheduler. Intel Shadow Stack was finally merged; Exploiting ROPs is now harder Support for Partial SMT Performance Improvement for CPUs with a lot of cores and shared Last Level Caches Continued Intel Meteor Lake graphics and sound enablement/improvements Better performance for Ext4 and io_uring Security: add io_uring_disabled to shrink kernel's attack surface DEFLATE compression support for EROFS | 24th LTS release The CFS scheduler was the de facto standard for 16+ yearsReiserFS is now declared to be obsolete and flagged for removal in 2025. | |
| Unsupported: 6.5 | 27 August 2023 | 6.5.13 | 28 November 2023 | Initial USB4 v2.0 support MIDI 2.0 support | ||
| Unsupported: 6.4 | 25 June 2023 | 6.4.16 | 13 September 2023 | Intel Linear Address Masking Partial support for Apple M2 Autonomous frequency and power control on AMD Zen architecture CPUs Support for RISC-V hibernation on future laptops Improvements for LoongArch CPU architecture Further Intel Meteor Lake Graphics development 4K resolution support for Rockchip Direct Rendering Manager driver Better AMDgpu support for the Steam Deck Optimizations to EROFS, Btrfs, F2FS, NTFS, and Ext4 Support for Intel Lunar Lake HD Audio Continued Wi-Fi 7 development Quality of life improvements for Apple silicon users Further Rust up-streaming to support the first Rust drivers Removal of SLOB memory allocator | ||
| Unsupported: 6.3 | 23 April 2023 | 6.3.13 | 11 July 2023 | Even more Rust in the kernel Initial Support for Intel Meteor Lake Display Intel Meteor Lake VPUs ("Versatile Processing Unit") support AMD Automatic IBRS Intel TPMI driver was merged, hopes are this will give more control over power management. Big Performance Improvement for EXT4. Nice Improvements for BTRFS too IPv4 BIG TCP support, maybe better network performance Microsoft Hyper-V nested hypervisor support. Faster kernel builds and with lower peak memory use. Removed support for the Intel ICC compiler. | ||
| Unsupported: 6.2 | 19 February 2023 | 6.2.16 | 17 May 2023 | Intel Arc drivers are now deemed "stable" and on by default. Initial FOSS support for NVIDIA GeForce 30 Series. But performance is poor for now. Support for Apple's M1 Call Depth Tracking as a better performance alternative to IBRS for older Intel CPUs Some Power-savings improvements when the system is idle or lightly loaded. Support for running Raspberry Pi in 4K@60Hz Better performance and scalability for running RAID5/6 in btrfs-like systems More Rust in the kernel | ||
| Supported: 6.1 | 11 December 2022 | 6.1.164 | December 2027 August 2033 | Support for writing kernel modules in Rust Multi-Gen LRU page reclaiming (not yet enabled by default) Btrfs performance improvements Support for more sound hardware Improved support for game controllers | 23rd LTS release Used in Debian 12 "Bookworm" 4th SLTS release (which CIP is planning to support until August 2033)6.1.28 is named Curry Ramen | |
| Unsupported: 6.0 | 2 October 2022 | 6.0.19 | January 2023 | Performance improvements on Intel Xeon 'Ice Lake', AMD Ryzen 'Threadripper', AMD EPYC New hardware support including Intel, AMD, Qualcomm | Named "Hurr durr I'ma [sic] ninja sloth" | |
| Legend:UnsupportedSupportedLatest versionPreview versionFuture version |
Releases 5.x.y
| Version | Original release date | Last release | Maintainer | EOL | Prominent features | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unsupported: 5.19 | 31 July 2022 | 5.19.17 | Greg Kroah-Hartman & Sasha Levin | October 2022 | Initial support for LoongArch Support for Big TCP More secure encrypted virtualization with AMD SEV-SNP and Intel TDX Armv9 Scalable Matrix Extension support Introduce Intel In-Field Scan driver to run targeted low level diagnostics outside of the CPU's architectural error detection capabilities a.out support removed | |
| Unsupported: 5.18 | 22 May 2022 | 5.18.19 | August 2022 | Support for Indirect Branch Tracking on Intel CPUs User events fprobe, for probing multiple functions with a single probe handler Headers rearchitecturing preparations for faster compilation times Stricter memcpy() compile-time bounds checking Switch to C11 | ||
| Unsupported: 5.17 | 20 March 2022 | 5.17.15 | June 2022 | BPF CO-RE support Random number generator improvements New Real-Time Linux Analysis (RTLA) tool Support giving names to anonymous memory Mitigate straight-line speculation attacks | Used in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS on newer hardware Named Superb Owl | |
| Unsupported: 5.16 | 9 January 2022 | 5.16.20 | April 2022 | New futex_waitv() system call for faster game performance Memory folios infrastructure for a faster memory management Add support for AMX instructions Improve write congestion | ||
| Supported: 5.15 | 31 October 2021 | 5.15.201 | December 2026 | New experimental NTFS file system implementation ksmbd, an in-kernel SMB 3 server Migrate memory pages to persistent memory in lieu of discard DAMON, a data access monitor Introduce process_mrelease(2) system call | 22nd LTS release; used in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Slackware 15, UEK 7 Named Trick or Treat | |
| Unsupported: 5.14 | 29 August 2021 | 5.14.21 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | November 2021 | Used in RHEL 9.x and derivatives (Red Hat ignores LTS-Kernel, own kernel-backports) and SLE 15 SP4/openSUSE Leap 15.4 | |
| Unsupported: 5.13 | 27 June 2021 | 5.13.19 | Greg Kroah-Hartman & Sasha Levin | September 2021 | Support for Zstd compressed modules Landlock Linux security module | Named Opossums on Parade |
| Unsupported: 5.12 | 25 April 2021 | 5.12.19 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | July 2021 | Named Frozen Wasteland | |
| Unsupported: 5.11 | 14 February 2021 | 5.11.22 | May 2021 | Named "💕 Valentine's Day Edition 💕" | ||
| Supported: 5.10 | 13 December 2020 | 5.10.251 | Greg Kroah-Hartman & Sasha Levin | December 2026 January 2031 | Support for ARM64 memory tagging extension (MTE) | 21st LTS release; used in Debian 11 "Bullseye" 3rd SLTS release (which CIP is planning to support until January 2031)Named "Dare mighty things" |
| Unsupported: 5.9 | 11 October 2020 | 5.9.16 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | December 2020 | ||
| Unsupported: 5.8 | 2 August 2020 | 5.8.18 | November 2020 | |||
| Unsupported: 5.7 | 31 May 2020 | 5.7.19 | August 2020 | |||
| Unsupported: 5.6 | 29 March 2020 | 5.6.19 | June 2020 | Initial USB4 support Year 2038 fix for 32-bit systems WireGuard | ||
| Unsupported: 5.5 | 26 January 2020 | 5.5.19 | April 2020 | |||
| Unsupported: 5.4 | 24 November 2019 | 5.4.302 | Greg Kroah-Hartman & Sasha Levin | December 2025 | 20th LTS release, used in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4-rc2 is named Nesting Opossum 5.4-rc5 is named Kleptomaniac Octopus | |
| Unsupported: 5.3 | 15 September 2019 | 5.3.18 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | December 2019 | ||
| Unsupported: 5.2 | 7 July 2019 | 5.2.20 | October 2019 | 5.2-rc2 is named Golden Lions 5.2 is named Bobtail Squid | ||
| Unsupported: 5.1 | 5 May 2019 | 5.1.21 | July 2019 | io_uring API, a new way to do asynchronous I/O (AIO), the older API/interface "aio" had problems and performance issues. | ||
| Unsupported: 5.0 | 3 March 2019 | 5.0.21 | June 2019 | |||
| Legend:UnsupportedSupportedLatest versionPreview versionFuture version |
Releases 4.x.y
| Version | Original release date | Last release | Maintainer | EOL | Prominent features | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unsupported: 4.20 | 23 December 2018 | 4.20.17 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | March 2019 | Named Shy Crocodile | |
| Supported: 4.19 | 22 October 2018 | 4.19.325 4.19.325-cip124 | Greg Kroah-Hartman & Sasha Levin Ulrich Hecht & Pavel Machek | December 2024 January 2029 | 19th LTS release. Used in Debian 10 "Buster". Second SLTS release (which CIP is planning to support until January 2029). Named "People's Front" | |
| Unsupported: 4.18 | 12 August 2018 | 4.18.20 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | November 2018 | RHEL 8.x (Red Hat ignores LTS-Kernel, own kernel-backports) | |
| Unsupported: 4.17 | 3 June 2018 | 4.17.19 | August 2018 | Named Merciless Moray | ||
| Unsupported: 4.16 | 1 April 2018 | 4.16.18 | June 2018 | |||
| Unsupported: 4.15 | 28 January 2018 | 4.15.18 | April 2018 | Used in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS | ||
| Unsupported: 4.14 | 12 November 2017 | 4.14.336 | Greg Kroah-Hartman & Sasha Levin | January 2024 | Zstd compression for Btrfs and Squashfs | 18th LTS release 4.14.1 is named Petit Gorille |
| Unsupported: 4.13 | 3 September 2017 | 4.13.16 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | November 2017 | ||
| Unsupported: 4.12 | 2 July 2017 | 4.12.14 | September 2017 | BFQ I/O scheduler Kyber I/O scheduler USB-C support | ||
| Unsupported: 4.11 | 30 April 2017 | 4.11.12 | July 2017 | |||
| Unsupported: 4.10 | 19 February 2017 | 4.10.17 | May 2017 | 4.10-rc5 was named Anniversary Edition 4.10-rc6 was named Fearless Coyote | ||
| Unsupported: 4.9 | 11 December 2016 | 4.9.337 | Greg Kroah-Hartman & Sasha Levin | January 2023 | 17th LTS release. Used in Debian 9 "Stretch". Named Roaring Lionus | |
| Unsupported: 4.8 | 25 September 2016 | 4.8.17 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | January 2017 | ||
| Unsupported: 4.7 | 24 July 2016 | 4.7.10 | October 2016 | Schedutil governor Async discard support EFI bootloader control driver | Named Psychotic Stoned Sheep | |
| Unsupported: 4.6 | 15 May 2016 | 4.6.7 | August 2016 | Named Charred Weasel | ||
| Unsupported: 4.5 | 13 March 2016 | 4.5.7 | June 2016 | |||
| Supported: 4.4 | 10 January 2016 | 4.4.302 4.4.302-cip103 | Greg Kroah-Hartman & Sasha Levin Ulrich Hecht & Pavel Machek | February 2022 January 2027 | 16th LTS release, used in Slackware 14.2. Canonical provided extended support until April 2021. As the first kernel selected for Super Long Term Support (SLTS), the Civil Infrastructure Platform will provide support until at least 2026. Used in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS | |
| Unsupported: 4.3 | 1 November 2015 | 4.3.6 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | February 2016 | Named Blurry Fish Butt | |
| Unsupported: 4.2 | 30 August 2015 | 4.2.8 | December 2015 | Canonical provided extended support until July 2016. | ||
| Unsupported: 4.1 | 22 June 2015 | 4.1.52 | Sasha Levin (formerly Greg Kroah-Hartman) | May 2018 | 15th LTS release. 4.1.1 was named Series 4800 | |
| Unsupported: 4.0 | 12 April 2015 | 4.0.9 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | July 2015 | Initial live patching support lazytime mount option | Named "Hurr durr I'ma [sic] sheep" (Internet poll) |
| Legend:UnsupportedSupportedLatest versionPreview versionFuture version |
Releases 3.x.y
The jump from 2.6.x to 3.x wasn't because of a breaking update, but rather the first release of a new versioning scheme introduced as a more convenient system.
| Version | Original release date | Last release | Maintainer | EOL | Prominent features | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unsupported: 3.19 | 8 February 2015 | 3.19.8 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | May 2015 | Canonical provided extended support until July 2016. | |
| Unsupported: 3.18 | 7 December 2014 | 3.18.140 | Greg Kroah-Hartman (formerly Sasha Levin) (formerly Greg Kroah-Hartman) | January 2017 | OverlayFS eBPF DCTCP support | 14th LTS release, named Diseased Newt |
| Unsupported: 3.17 | 5 October 2014 | 3.17.8 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | January 2015 | ||
| Unsupported: 3.16 | 3 August 2014 | 3.16.85 | Ben Hutchings (formerly Greg Kroah-Hartman) | Maintained until October 2014, then May 2016 to June 2020 | 13th LTS release. Was used in Debian 8 "Jessie". Canonical provided extended support until April 2016. 3.16.1 was named Museum of Fishiegoodies | |
| Unsupported: 3.15 | 8 June 2014 | 3.15.10 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | August 2014 | LZ4 compression support for zram | |
| Unsupported: 3.14 | 30 March 2014 | 3.14.79 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | August 2016 | zram support | 12th LTS release, named Shuffling Zombie Juror |
| Unsupported: 3.13 | 19 January 2014 | 3.13.11 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | April 2014 | Canonical provided extended support until April 2016. Named One Giant Leap for Frogkind (NASA LADEE launch photo) Used in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS | |
| Unsupported: 3.12 | 3 November 2013 | 3.12.74 | Jiří Slabý (formerly Greg Kroah-Hartman) | May 2017 | 11th LTS release, named Suicidal Squirrel | |
| Unsupported: 3.11 | 2 September 2013 | 3.11.10 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | November 2013 | zswap support | Canonical provided extended support until August 2014. Named Linux for Workgroups after the 20 years of Windows 3.11 |
| Unsupported: 3.10 | 30 June 2013 | 3.10.108 | Willy Tarreau (formerly Greg Kroah-Hartman) | November 2017 | bcache support | 10th LTS release, 3.10.6 was named TOSSUG Baby Fish used in Slackware 14.1 RHEL 7.x |
| Unsupported: 3.9 | 28 April 2013 | 3.9.11 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | July 2013 | dm-cache support suspend-freeze Intel P-state support | 3.9.6 was named Black Squirrel Wakeup Call |
| Unsupported: 3.8 | 18 February 2013 | 3.8.13 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | May 2013 | F2FS file system i386 support removed | Canonical provided extended support until August 2014. Named Unicycling Gorilla 3.8.5 was named Displaced Humerus Anterior |
| Unsupported: 3.7 | 10 December 2012 | 3.7.10 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | March 2013 | ARM64 support | Named Terrified Chipmunk |
| Unsupported: 3.6 | 30 September 2012 | 3.6.11 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | December 2012 | Initial support of send/receive and sub-volume quotas for Btrfs | |
| Unsupported: 3.5 | 21 July 2012 | 3.5.7 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | October 2012 | Canonical provided extended support until April 2014. | |
| Unsupported: 3.4 | 20 May 2012 | 3.4.113 | Li Zefan (formerly Greg Kroah-Hartman) | October 2016 | 9th LTS release | |
| Unsupported: 3.3 | 18 March 2012 | 3.3.8 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | June 2012 | ||
| Unsupported: 3.2 | 4 January 2012 | 3.2.102 | Ben Hutchings | May 2018 | 8th LTS release, used in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and optionally in 12.04 ESM, Debian 7 "Wheezy" and Slackware 14.0. Canonical promised to (at least) provide long-term support until April 2017; Support has continued for months after. 3.2 to 3.5 was named Saber-toothed Squirrel | |
| Unsupported: 3.1 | 24 October 2011 | 3.1.10 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | January 2012 | 3.1 provided the base for real-time tree. 3.1-rc2 was named Wet Seal 3.1 was named Divemaster Edition (Linus' diving activities) | |
| Unsupported: 3.0 | 21 July 2011 | 3.0.101 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | October 2013 | Btrfs: automatic defragmentation and scrubbing support | 7th LTS release Named Sneaky Weasel |
| Legend:UnsupportedSupportedLatest versionPreview versionFuture version |
Releases 2.6.x.y
Versions 2.6.16 and 2.6.27 of the Linux kernel were unofficially given long-term support (LTS), before a 2011 working group in the Linux Foundation started a formal long-term support initiative.
| Version | Original release date | Last release | Maintainer | EOL | Prominent features | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unsupported: 2.6.39 | 18 May 2011 | 2.6.39.4 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | August 2011 | Last stable release of the 2.6 kernel series | |
| Unsupported: 2.6.38 | 14 March 2011 | 2.6.38.8 | June 2011 | Named Flesh-Eating Bats with Fangs | ||
| Unsupported: 2.6.37 | 4 January 2011 | 2.6.37.6 | March 2011 | |||
| Unsupported: 2.6.36 | 20 October 2010 | 2.6.36.4 | February 2011 | AppArmor security module | ||
| Unsupported: 2.6.35 | 1 August 2010 | 2.6.35.14 | Andi Kleen | March 2012 | 6th LTS release 2.6.35.7 was named Yokohama | |
| Unsupported: 2.6.34 | 16 May 2010 | 2.6.34.15 | Paul Gortmaker | February 2014 | 5th LTS release It was named Sheep on Meth | |
| Unsupported: 2.6.33 | 24 February 2010 | 2.6.33.20 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | November 2011 | nouveau driver | 4th LTS release. It was the base for real-time-tree, replaced by 3.0.x. |
| Unsupported: 2.6.32 | 2 December 2009 | 2.6.32.71 | Willy Tarreau (formerly Greg Kroah-Hartman) | March 2016 | Kernel same-page merging (KSM) | 3rd LTS release, used in Debian 6 Squeeze. Canonical also provided support until April 2015. RHEL 6.x |
| Unsupported: 2.6.31 | 9 September 2009 | 2.6.31.14 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | July 2010 | USB 3.0 support | |
| Unsupported: 2.6.30 | 9 June 2009 | 2.6.30.9 | October 2009 | Tomoyo Linux security module | 2.6.30-rc4–2.6.30-rc6 was named Vindictive Armadillo Releases between 2.6 and 2.9 were named 2.Man-Eating Seals of Antiquity | |
| Unsupported: 2.6.29 | 23 March 2009 | 2.6.29.6 | July 2009 | Btrfs support | Named Temporary Tasmanian Devil | |
| Unsupported: 2.6.28 | 24 December 2008 | 2.6.28.10 | May 2009 | ext4 stable support | 2.6.28-rc1–2.6.28-rc6 was named Killer Bat of Doom 2.6.28 was named Erotic Pickled Herring | |
| Unsupported: 2.6.27 | 9 October 2008 | 2.6.27.62 | Willy Tarreau (formerly Adrian Bunk, and formerly Greg Kroah-Hartman) | March 2012 | 2nd LTS release 2.6.27.3 was named Trembling Tortoise | |
| Unsupported: 2.6.26 | 13 July 2008 | 2.6.26.8 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | November 2008 | 2.6.26–2.6.27 was named Rotary Wombat | |
| Unsupported: 2.6.25 | 16 April 2008 | 2.6.25.20 | November 2008 | Smack Linux security module | Named Funky Weasel is Jiggy wit it | |
| Unsupported: 2.6.24 | 24 January 2008 | 2.6.24.7 | May 2008 | cgroups support | 2.6.23-rc4–2.6.23-rc6 was named Pink Farting Weasel 2.6.23-rc7–2.6.23–2.6.24 was named Arr Matey! A Hairy Bilge Rat! (TLAPD 2007) 2.6.24.1 was named Err Metey! A Heury Beelge-a Ret! | |
| Unsupported: 2.6.23 | 9 October 2007 | 2.6.23.17 | February 2008 | CFS process scheduler | ||
| Unsupported: 2.6.22 | 8 July 2007 | 2.6.22.19 | February 2008 | New 802.11 (Wi-Fi) stack SLUB memory allocator | 2.6.22-rc3–2.6.22-rc4 was named Jeff Thinks I Should Change This, But To What? 2.6.22-rc5–2.6.22 was named Holy Dancing Manatees, Batman! | |
| Unsupported: 2.6.21 | 25 April 2007 | 2.6.21.7 | August 2007 | GPIO support Dynticks | Named Nocturnal Monster Puppy | |
| Unsupported: 2.6.20 | 4 February 2007 | 2.6.20.21 | October 2007 | Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) | Named Homicidal Dwarf Hamster | |
| Unsupported: 2.6.19 | 29 November 2006 | 2.6.19.7 | March 2007 | AHCI support GFS2 | Named Avast! A bilge rat! (TLAPD 2006) | |
| Unsupported: 2.6.18 | 20 September 2006 | 2.6.18.8 | February 2007 2.6.18: RHEL 5.x | NCQ and SATA hotplug support | ||
| Unsupported: 2.6.17 | 17 June 2006 | 2.6.17.14 | October 2006 | splice() | 2.6.17-rc5 was named Lordi Rules (Eurovision 2006 winners) 2.6.17-rc6–2.6.17 was named Crazed Snow-Weasel | |
| Unsupported: 2.6.16 | 20 March 2006 | 2.6.16.62 | Adrian Bunk (formerly Greg Kroah-Hartman) | July 2008 | OCFS2 support SLOB memory allocator | 1st LTS release 2.6.16.28-rc2 was named Stable Penguin |
| Unsupported: 2.6.15 | 2 January 2006 | 2.6.15.7 | Greg Kroah-Hartman | May 2006 | S.M.A.R.T. support | Named Sliding Snow Leopard |
| Unsupported: 2.6.14 | 27 October 2005 | 2.6.14.7 | January 2006 | FUSE support | Named Affluent Albatross | |
| Unsupported: 2.6.13 | 28 August 2005 | 2.6.13.5 | December 2005 | initramfs | Named Woozy NumbatThe 2.6.12 release was the first one managed by Git. | |
| Unsupported: 2.6.12 | 18 June 2005 | 2.6.12.6 | August 2005 | |||
| Unsupported: 2.6.11 | 2 March 2005 | 2.6.11.12 | June 2005 | |||
| Unsupported: 2.6.10 | 24 December 2004 | Switchable and modular I/O schedulers | ||||
| Unsupported: 2.6.9 | 19 October 2004 | |||||
| Unsupported: 2.6.8 | 14 August 2004 | |||||
| Unsupported: 2.6.7 | 16 June 2004 | |||||
| Unsupported: 2.6.6 | 10 May 2004 | CFQ I/O scheduler Laptop mode | ||||
| Unsupported: 2.6.5 | 4 April 2004 | Adaptive lazy readahead | ||||
| Unsupported: 2.6.4 | 11 March 2004 | Intel x86-64 support ARMv6 support Virtual console UTF-8 mode support | ||||
| Unsupported: 2.6.3 | 18 February 2004 | Power Mac G5 support | ||||
| Unsupported: 2.6.2 | 4 February 2004 | RAID 6 support | ||||
| Unsupported: 2.6.1 | 9 January 2004 | EFI support | ||||
| Unsupported: 2.6 | 17 December 2003 | Linus Torvalds | December 2004 | O(1) scheduler Preemption (2.5.4) Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) SELinux security module | 2.6.2–2.6.4 was named Feisty Dunnart 2.6.5–2.6.9 was named Zonked Quokka2.6.9: RHEL 4.x The 2.5 kernels were development kernels | |
| Legend:UnsupportedSupportedLatest versionPreview versionFuture version |
Releases before 2.6.0
| Version | Original release date | Last release | Maintainer | EOL | Prominent features | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unsupported: 2.4 | 4 January 2001 | 2.4.37.11 | Willy Tarreau (formerly Marcelo Tosatti) | December 2011 | JFS support (2.4.24) XFS support (2.4.20) ext3 support (2.4.15) ReiserFS support (2.4.1) tmpfs support GFS support Netfilter (2.3.15) | The 2.3 kernels were development kernels 2.4.9: RHEL 2.1 2.4.10: Featured a complete rewrite of the Virtual Memory Management (VMM) subsystem. 2.4.21: RHEL 3.x |
| Unsupported: 2.2 | 26 January 1999 | 2.2.26 | Marc-Christian Petersen (formerly Alan Cox) | Made unofficially obsolete with the 2.2.27-rc2 | USB devices support Frame-buffer console ipchains Video4Linux NTFS (readonly), FAT32 and HFS support Initial IPv6 support SPX support Loop device support Scheduling classes and scheduler SMP support SLAB memory allocator | The 2.1 kernels were development kernels |
| Unsupported: 2.0 | 9 June 1996 | 2.0.40 | David Weinehall | officially made obsolete with the kernel 2.2.0 release | Symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) support | Larry Ewing created the Tux mascot in 1996 |
| Unsupported: 1.3 | 12 June 1995 | 1.3.100 | Linus Torvalds | EOL | /dev/random watchdog timer Automatic modules loading initrd boot support bzImage support | Greased Weasel |
| Unsupported: 1.2 | 7 March 1995 | 1.2.13 | Round-robin scheduling | Linux '95 | ||
| Unsupported: 1.1 | 6 April 1994 | 1.1.95 | ipfw Dual IDE interface support ATAPI CD-ROM support | |||
| Unsupported: 1.0 | 14 March 1994 | 1.0.9 | Open Sound System (OSS) NTP support | |||
| Unsupported: 0.99 | 13 December 1992 | 0.99.15j | Xiafs support ext2 support NFS support kmalloc | The Linux 0.99 tar.bz2 archive grew from 426 kB to 1009 kB on the way to 1.0. | ||
| Unsupported: 0.98 | 29 September 1992 | 0.98.6 | TCP/IP support SCSI tape support ISO 9660 support | |||
| Unsupported: 0.97 | 1 August 1992 | 0.97.6 | Initial procfs PS/2 mouse support Microsoft bus mouse support SCSI CD-ROM support | |||
| Unsupported: 0.96 | 22 May 1992 | 0.96c.2 | ext support (0.96c) FAT16 support Shared libraries Logitech bus mouse support | |||
| Unsupported: 0.95 | 8 March 1992 | 0.95c+ | Login prompt Initial parallel port printer support Initial reboot support | Jump from 0.12 to 0.95 First version released under the GPL. Although the license change took effect as of the first of February of 1992. | ||
| Unsupported: 0.12 | 15 January 1992 | Job control Virtual consoles pty Symbolic links Virtual memory | ||||
| Unsupported: 0.11 | 8 December 1991 | Demand-loading from disk CGA, MGA and EGA support malloc | First kernel where other people start making real contributions | |||
| Unsupported: 0.10 | November 1991 | Initial floppy driver support Supports up to 16MB RAM | Jump from 0.03 to 0.10 First release where Minix isn't needed anymore | |||
| Unsupported: 0.03 | October 1991 | Multithreaded filesystem | ||||
| Unsupported: 0.02 | 5 October 1991 | US keyboard support | First "usable" release; for wider distribution | |||
| Unsupported: 0.01 | 17 September 1991 | i386 support PATA support Minix support VGA text mode Hardcoded Finnish keyboard Supports up to 8MB RAM | ||||
| Legend:UnsupportedSupportedLatest versionPreview versionFuture version |
See also
External links
- , on the official Linux kernel website
- , in Linux Kernel Newbies
- at LWN.net
- at the Wayback Machine (archived 2023-04-06)