From Linus Torvalds <> Date Sun, 29 May 2011 18:30:32 -0700 Subject Linux 3.0-rc1 Yay! Let the bikeshed painting discussions about version numbering

begin (or at least re-start).



I decided to just bite the bullet, and call the next version 3.0. It

will get released close enough to the 20-year mark, which is excuse

enough for me, although honestly, the real reason is just that I can

no longe rcomfortably count as high as 40.



The whole renumbering was discussed at last years Kernel Summit, and

there was a plan to take it up this year too. But let's face it -

what's the point of being in charge if you can't pick the bike shed

color without holding a referendum on it? So I'm just going all

alpha-male, and just renumbering it. You'll like it.



Now, my alpha-maleness sadly does not actually extend to all the

scripts and Makefile rules, so the kernel is fighting back, and is

calling itself 3.0.0-rc1. We'll have the usual 6-7 weeks to wrestle it

into submission, and get scripts etc cleaned up, and the final release

should be just "3.0". The -stable team can use the third number for

their versioning.



So what are the big changes?



NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. Sure, we have the usual two thirds driver

changes, and a lot of random fixes, but the point is that 3.0 is

*just* about renumbering, we are very much *not* doing a KDE-4 or a

Gnome-3 here. No breakage, no special scary new features, nothing at

all like that. We've been doing time-based releases for many years

now, this is in no way about features. If you want an excuse for the

renumbering, you really should look at the time-based one ("20 years")

instead.



So no ABI changes, no API changes, no magical new features - just

steady plodding progress. In addition to the driver changes (and the

bulk really is driver updates), we've had some nice VFS cleanups,

various VM fixes, some nice initial ARM consolidation (yay!) and in

general this is supposed to be a fairly normal release cycle. The

merge window was a few days shorter than usual, but if that ends up

meaning a smaller release and a nice stable 3.0 release, that is all

good. There's absolutely no reason to aim for the traditional ".0"

problems that so many projects have.



In fact, I think that in addition to the shorter merge window, I'm

also considering make this one of my "Linus is being a difficult

^&^hole" releases, where I really want to be pretty strict about what

I pull during the stabilization window. Part of that is that I'm going

to be traveling next week with a slow atom laptop, so you had better

convince me I *really* want to pull from you, because that thing

really is not the most impressive piece of hardware ever built. It

does the "git" workflow quite well, but let's just say that compiling

the kernel is not quite the user experience I've gotten used to.



So be nice to me, and send me only really important fixes. And let's

make sure we really make the next release not just an all new shiny

number, but a good kernel too.



Ok?



Go forth and test,



Linus





