Canonical Extends the Support for Linux Kernel 3.13 Until April 2016

[sujith]

The Ubuntu developers have announced that they continue to provide support for the Linux kernel 3.13.x that has just reached end of life.

Greg Kroah-Hartman, the maintainer of the 3.13.x branch of the Linux kernel, has revealed that this particular version has reached end of life and that users should upgrade as soon as possible.

This might be a problem if you are on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr), the Linux distribution developed by Canonical that was just released a week ago. The Ubuntu developers integrated Linux kernel 3.13.x and it will remain at that version until the first point release is made available.

The Ubuntu kernel team had only one choice, to pick the Linux kernel 3.13.x development and to convince kernel developers to continue to send patches. They will be using the same system, which means that nothing will basically change, with the exception of two things. The numbering of the kernel will be a little different and it won't be listed on the kernel's official website.

“The Ubuntu kernel team will pick up stable maintenance where Greg KH left off with v3.13.11 (thanks, Greg!)... The Ubuntu kernel team is pleased to announce that we will be providing extended stable support for the Linux 3.13 kernel until April 2016 as a third party effort maintained on our infrastructure.”

“Our linux-3.13.y{-queue,-review} stable branches will fork from v3.13.11 and will be published here:git://kernel.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/linux.git.”

“We will use the same stable request/review workflow and follow the standard upstream stable kernel rules. We welcome any feedback and contribution to this effort. We will be posting the first review cycle patch set in a week or two,” reads the announcement from Canonical.

This is not something new for Canonical and its developers. They had to do the same in the past when they released an operating system and the kernel developers pulled the plug on the same version of the kernel that they were using.

The fact that the support for Linux kernel 3.13 will be extended until April 2016 means that there are two more years of support for a kernel that reached end of life just yesterday, with its last official version.

Besides Ubuntu, which will greatly benefit from the continued support for the kernel, there are also a few other distributions out there that are using the Ubuntu version of the kernel. The most prominent is Manjaro and it's likely that it will continue to do so.

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