Linux Turns 20, Finally Upgrades Version

Posted 05/30/2011 at 10:46am | by Brad Chacos

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It's been a long time and a lot of variations in the making, but Linux is finally uprevving. Linus Torvalds introduced the very first Linux kernel 20 years ago, and his new release marks the 40th major change to said kernel. Combine that kind of numerical synchronicity with the Linux community's passionate pleas to upgrade and leave obsolete features behind, and you're left with the perfect mix for Linux 3.0 RC 1, which Linus posted to the kernel.org mailing list late Sunday evening.

"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 longer comfortably count as high as 40," Linus posted. "So I'm just going all alpha-male, and just renumbering it."

Despite the history-shattering numerical change, don't expect anything big from Linux 3.0 RC1. "So what are the big changes? NOTHING. Absolutely nothing... 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," Linus said in the same post.