kernel release

Rousset, France-based semiconductor firm Atmel announced that the Linux 2.6.27 mainline kernel release has added support for its AT91SAM9G20 system-on-chip (SoC).

Equipped with an ARM926EJ-S core clocked to 400MHz, the AT91SAM9G20 is offered with a Linux v2.6.27 kernel, patches, drivers, demos, and the Angstrom/OpenEmbedded development environment, says the company.

While not a ground-breaking Linux kernel release, the new Linux kernel, 2.6.27, offers at least five outstanding new features.

InternetNews: "The latest Linux 2.6.27 kernel release is out with support for Webcams as well as a new file system for SSDs (solid state disks) (define) among its improvements."

Filed under: OS Updates, Linux, Canonical

Over at internetnews.com is an article that takes a look at the kerneloops.org project.

The project keeps track of Linux kernel "oops" signatures by collecting them from mailing lists and via a client program that will automatically send them to the server.

"As a result, Van de Ven sees Linux developers fixing bugs thanks to those reports -- thereby making an impact on overall kernel quality.

For many years, each Linux kernel release was assigned a series of three numbers, X.Y.Z, with an even Y indicating a "stable" release, and an odd Y indicating an "unstable" development release.

Z was incremented for each individual kernel release. The "stable" 1.0.0 Linux kernel was released in March of 1994.

New development was then continued in the "unstable" 1.1.z branch, until the "stable" 1.2.0 Linux kernel was release in March of 1995.

Major improvements in the kernel lead to X being incremented to 2, and a "stable" 2.0 kernel was released in June of 1996.

Linus has announced the availability of the final 2.6.26 kernel release, noting that several regressions got fixed toward the end of the cycle.

For those just tuning in, some of the bigger changes in 2.6.26 include PAT support in the x86 architecture, the KGDB debugger, a lot of virtualization work, and more.