Monday, February 5, 2007

Linux Kernel 2.6.20 Released

Linus Torvalds announced today the final and stable release of the Linux kernel, version 2.6.20:

"I tried rather hard to make 2.6.20 largely a ‘stabilization release’. Unlike a lot of kernels lately, there aren't really any big fundamental changes to some core infrastructure area, and while we always have bugs, I really am hoping that we fixed many more than we introduced. Have fun. And remember: the thousandth decimal is, of course, 9. There *will* be a test on this afterwards."


Highlights of this release include:

• Sony Playstation 3 support
• Virtualization support through KVM
• Paravirtualization support for i386
• Relocatable kernel support for x86
• Fault injection
• IO Accounting
• Relative atime support
• UDP-Lite support
• Generic HID layer
• Sleazy FPU optimization
• Use 'regparm' in x86-32
• round_jiffies() infrastructure
• New drivers

For a full change-log with all the new features and improvements, please visit this website.

The Linux Kernel is the essential part of all Linux Distributions, responsible for resource allocation, low-level hardware interfaces, security, simple communications, and basic file system management.

Linux is a clone of the operating system Unix, initially written from scratch by Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across the Net. It aims towards POSIX and Single UNIX Specification compliance.

You can download the Linux kernel now from Softpedia.

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