The incidents that preceded (and accompanied) the Linux kernel 4.19 development cycle have been one of the most critical ones faced by the Linux community. In order to bring some major changes to the community, Linus Torvalds took a break from kernel development and passed the baton to Greg Kroah-Hartman. A new Code of Conduct was also adopted.
Now, after eight release candidates, Greg has released the Linux kernel 4.19. Underlining the ongoing challenges, he wrote in the release post: “It’s been a long strange journey for this kernel release…”
The 4.19 release announcement is a bit lot longer than we are used to. Apart from the usual description of the major changes, Greg he also wrote about the commitment to welcome the new people and help them learn things. That’s why this release is also codenamed People’s Front.
“Part of learning how things work is dealing with the interaction between people, and trying to understand the basic social norms and goals that we all share,” he added.
Greg also advised the fellow kernel developers to take a day or two off, recharge, and help create “create a system that the world has never seen the likes of, together.”
Moving on to the changes coming to this release, it’s a particularly big release with more changes than the past three kernels. You can read the announcement post for the shortlog from 4.19 rc-8 to 4.19 stable.
It goes without saying that the Linux kernel 4.20 merge window is now open. Also, Linus is back to take over the development process.
Grab Linux 4.19 from kernel.org.
