[ Thanks to Jeremy Andrews for this
link. ]
“A recent lkml thread explored an interesting tangent when Jeff
Garzik asked about what was to follow the 2.5 development kernel,
‘is it definitely to be named 2.6? Maybe it’s just my impression
from development speed, but it felt more like a 3.0 to me :)’.
Linux creator Linus Torvalds first suggested that there was no
reason to skip from 2.5 to 3.0, qualifying it with, ‘But hey, it’s
just a number. I don’t feel that strongly either way.’“Ingo Molnar reflected on the significant improvements we’ve
seen to the VM and the IO subsystem, going so far as to say, ‘I
think due to these improvements if we don’t call the next kernel
3.0 then probably no Linux kernel in the future will deserve a
major number. In 2-4 years we’ll only jump to 3.0 because there’s
no better number available after 2.8.’“Linus agreed that if the VM is as good as it seems to be,
indeed the upcoming release deserves to be called 3.0. But he also
pointed out that there are many silent users who tend not to speak
up until there is an official release. He asks, ‘people who are
having VM trouble with the current 2.5.x series, please _complain_,
and tell what your workload is. Don’t sit silent and make us think
we’re good to go.. And if Ingo is right, I’ll do the 3.0.x
thing…'”