In Open Source Summit Europe, Jonathan Corbett, Linux kernel developer and executive editor of Linux Weekly News, updated on what's new coming to the Linux kernel: The long-term support (LTS from Long-term support) on Linux kernels is reduced from six to two years.
At the moment there are six LTS Linux kernels – 6.1, 5.15, 5.10, 5.4, 4.19 and 4.14. According to the to date procedure, 4.14 will be released until January 2024 and then another kernel will be added.
Moving forward though, when kernel 4.14 and the two subsequent ones stop being supported, they won't be replaced by the next ones.
Why; Simply as Corbett explained: “There's no point in keeping them for so long space because people don't use them." Strongly Agree. While I'm sure there are some people still running 4.14 on Linux systems, there won't be many.
Another reason, and a much bigger problem than simply maintaining LTS, according to Corbett, is that Linux code maintainers are running out. Maintainers not developers. On average, more than 2.000 developers have been involved in recent Linux releases – including about 200 new developers working on each version.
However, maintainers – the people who check the code to see if it fits and works properly – are starting to dwindle.
Conservationists face many obstacles in doing so work their. Hurdle one: Many of them don't get paid. They maintain code after their day jobs. In addition, they face increasing demands on their time – due to understaffing and due to the use of the fuzzer to find errors. While fuzzers are useful, they reveal too many small bugs, each of which should be investigated regardless of severity and then discarded by maintainers.
While I read the article several hours ago, I did not express my thought as I wanted to think for a while.
Probably YES, not trial, necessary and practical to maintain maintenance for 6 years. Indeed, within 6 years, those of us who use Linux have changed 20 generations and "flavors" of Linux. Mostly for fun, except when we found Samba didn't work on ubuntu where we reverted to older stable and working versions.
But I will focus on two points, knowing that I will be -slightly- off topic.
If there is something that should concern society, it is not so much the duration of LTS maintenance, but the non-payment of maintainers and their gradual non-existence, in the "computing market".
At the same time, I repeat that the multi-division into "flavors" into "forks" and into "distributions" should be of concern to the linux community, which essentially ONLY offer confusion to users, who "don't want to learn how to cook it but want to they eat it” linux. That is, they don't care who and what maintains their platform but they want to go online, see and read news and generally spend some time in front of a hyperinflationary corner of knowledge (and stupidity many times).
My personal opinion is that it should be removed from the desktop AND the Terminal since a) it terrifies ordinary users and b) it is complicated for ordinary - everyday computer users.
The 30+ year life of Linux should overcome the "infantile diseases" of the communities that create and maintain it and take the next step that will bring (Linux) to the majority of their users' computers and program designers.
Note: unfortunately the creator of Linux, Linus Torcalds, will have to stand aside for a while (even a long time) since, yes, he was a pioneering person in the creation of Linux, but administratively and organizationally, he suffers...
Right! I will agree. There is an ambiguity in some matters.