#pragma keywords Linux, Kernel, Operative System, Linus Torvalds, Open Source, drivers
#pragma description Summary of the changes and new features merged in the Linux Kernel during the 2.5.x, 2.6.x and 3.x development cycles

This is a list of links to every changelog.

= 3.x =
 * [wiki:Linux_3.11 Linux 3.11] Released soon 2013 ( days)
 * [wiki:Linux_3.10 Linux 3.10] Released 30 Jun, 2013 ( days)
 * [wiki:Linux_3.9 Linux 3.9] Released 28 April, 2013 ( days)
 * [wiki:Linux_3.8 Linux 3.8] Released 18 Feb, 2013 ( days)
 * [wiki:Linux_3.7 Linux 3.7] Released 10 Dec 2012 ( days)
 * [wiki:Linux_3.6 Linux 3.6] Released Sep 30, 2012 (71 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_3.5 Linux 3.5] Released 21 Jul, 2012 (62 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_3.4 Linux 3.4] Released 20 May, 2012 (63 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_3.3 Linux 3.3] Released 18 Mar, 2012 (74 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_3.2 Linux 3.2] Released 4 Jan, 2012 (72 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_3.1 Linux 3.1] Released 24 Oct, 2011 (95 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_3.0 Linux 3.0] Released 21 Jul, 2011 (64 days)

= 2.6.x =
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_39 Linux 2.6.39] Released 18 May, 2011 (65 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_38 Linux 2.6.38] Released 14 March, 2011 (69 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_37 Linux 2.6.37] Released 4 January, 2011 (76 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_36 Linux 2.6.36] Released 20 October, 2010 (80 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_35 Linux 2.6.35] Released 1 August, 2010 (76 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_34 Linux 2.6.34] Released 16 May, 2010 (81 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_33 Linux 2.6.33] Released 24 February, 2010 (83 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_32 Linux 2.6.32] Released 3 December, 2009 (84 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_31 Linux 2.6.31] Released 9 September, 2009 (92 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_30 Linux 2.6.30] Released 9 June, 2009 (77 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_29 Linux 2.6.29] Released 24 March, 2009 (89 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_28 Linux 2.6.28] Released 25 December, 2008 (77 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_27 Linux 2.6.27] Released 9 October, 2008 (88 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_26 Linux 2.6.26] Released 13 July, 2008 (87 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_25 Linux 2.6.25] Released 17 April, 2008 (84 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_24 Linux 2.6.24] Released 24 January, 2008 (107 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_23 Linux 2.6.23] Released 9 October, 2007 (93 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_22 Linux 2.6.22] Released 8 July, 2007 (73 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_21 Linux 2.6.21] Released 26 April, 2007 (80 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_20 Linux 2.6.20] Released 5 February, 2007 (68 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_19 Linux 2.6.19] Released 29 November, 2006 (70 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_18 Linux 2.6.18] Released 20 September, 2006 (95 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_17 Linux 2.6.17] Released 17 June, 2006 (88 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_16 Linux 2.6.16] Released 20 March, 2006 (76 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_15 Linux 2.6.15] Released 3 January, 2006 (68 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_14 Linux 2.6.14] Released 27 October, 2005 (59 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_13 Linux 2.6.13] Released 29 August, 2005 (73 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_12 Linux 2.6.12] Released 17 June, 2005 (107 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_11 Linux 2.6.11] Released 2 March, 2005 (68 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_10 Linux 2.6.10] Released 24 December, 2004 (66 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_9 Linux 2.6.9] Released 19 October, 2004 (66 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_8 Linux 2.6.8] Released 14 August, 2004 (59 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_7 Linux 2.6.7] Released 16 June, 2004 (37 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_6 Linux 2.6.6] Released 10 May, 2004 (36 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_5 Linux 2.6.5] Released 4 April, 2004 (24 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_4 Linux 2.6.4] Released 11 March, 2004 (22 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_3 Linux 2.6.3] Released 18 February, 2004 (14 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_2 Linux 2.6.2] Released 4 February, 2004 (26 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_1 Linux 2.6.1] Released 9 January, 2004 (22 days)
 * [wiki:Linux_2_6_0 Linux 2.6.0] Released 18 December, 2003


= 2.5.x =

2.6.0-test9:
  * Libata driver architecture [http://lwn.net/Articles/44243/ (LWN article)]

2.6.0-test6:
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=104344596912094&w=2 32-bit dev_t]
  * Direct I/O support for reiserfs

2.6.0-test3:
  * [http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/index.html SELinux]


2.6.0-test1:
  * [http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/ Linux Virtual Server layer]

2.5.75 released July 10, 2003:
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-mm&m=104529418208788&w=2 Anticipatory Scheduler]
  * "kblockd" kernel threads
  * "nointegrity" JFS mount option

2.5.74 released July 2, 2003:

2.5.73 released June 22, 2003:

2.5.72 released June 17, 2003:

2.5.71 released June 14, 2003:
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=104981044405395&w=2 Switch the IDE I/O layers to taskfile]

2.5.70 released May 27, 2003:
  * [http://www.linux-usb.org/gadget USB gadget support]

2.5.69 released May 5, 2003:
  * New interrupt handling API [http://lwn.net/Articles/29555/ (LWN article)]
  * Runtime barrier instruction patching: Allows optimal performance on different processors without the need to ship multiple kernels

2.5.68 released April 20, 2003:
  * Merging s390 and s390x into a single architecture 
  * Generation of hotplug events from kobject registration

2.5.67 released April 7, 2003:

2.5.66 released March 24, 2003:

2.5.65 released March 17, 2003:
  * [http://www.kerneltrap.org/node.php?id=603 Desktop Interactivity Improvements]

2.5.64 released March 5, 2003:

2.5.63 released February 24, 2003:
  * [http://high-res-timers.sourceforge.net/ POSIX timers]

2.5.62 released February 17, 2003:
  * [http://lse.sourceforge.net/locking/dcache/dcache_lock.html Avoid dcache_lock while path walking]

2.5.61 released February 15, 2003:

2.5.60 released February 10, 2003:
  * New modversions implementation
  * 64-bit jiffies

2.5.59 released Janury 17, 2003:
  * [http://home.arcor.de/efocht/sched/ NUMA aware scheduler extensions]

2.5.58 released January 14, 2003:

2.5.57 released January 13, 2003:
  * [http://www.zipworld.com.au/~akpm/linux/schedlat.html Remove long-held locks for low scheduling latency]

2.5.56 released January 10, 2003:

2.5.55 released January 9, 2003:

2.5.54 released January 2, 2003:
  * [http://secure.netroedge.com/~lm78/ Add lm-sensors drivers for hardware health monitoring]
  * Support for AGP 3.0

2.5.53 released December 24, 2002:
  * SYSENTER/SYSEXIT support: Systems that support the SYSENTER extension (Basically Intel Pentium-II and above, and AMD Athlons) now have a faster method of making the transition from userspace to kernelspace when a syscall is performed. Pentium Pro also has SYSENTER, but due to errata, is unusable. Need an updated glibc to use it.

2.5.52 released December 16, 2002:

2.5.51 released December 10, 2002:
  * [http://linuxconsole.sourceforge.net/ Rewrite of the console layer]
  * Compatibility syscall layer

2.5.50 released November 27, 2002:

2.5.49 released November 22, 2002:

2.5.48 released November 18, 2002:
  * [http://lists.insecure.org/lists/linux-kernel/2002/Oct/6214.html In-kernel module loader]

2.5.47 released November 11, 2002:
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=101843329231392&w=2 Zerocopy NFS]

2.5.46 released November 4, 2002:
  * [http://www.xmailserver.org/linux-patches/nio-improve.html Better I/O performance with epoll], [http://lwn.net/Articles/14168/ (LWN article)]
  * Per-cpu hot & cold page lists
  * [http://www.uclinux.org/ MMU-less processor support (ucLinux)]
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=101095500820185&w=2 Replace initrd by initramfs]
  * Extended Attributes and ACLs for ext2/ext3

2.5.45 released October 31, 2002:
  * [http://www.xs4all.nl/~zippel/lc/ New Linux configuration system: kconfig]
  * [http://samba.org/~jamesm/crypto/ CryptoAPI]
  * [ftp://ftp.linux-ipv6.org/pub/usagi/patch/ipsec/ IPSEC]
  * [http://www.linuxtv.org/dvb/ Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) layer]
  * [http://www.sistina.com/products_lvm.htm Device mapper for Logical Volume Manager (LVM2)]

2.5.44 released October 19, 2002:
  * New sysfs filesystem (formerly known as driverfs) [http://lwn.net/Articles/36850/ (LWN article)]
  * Plug'N Play Layer Rewrite
  * x86 BIOS Enhanced Disk Device (EDD) polling [http://lwn.net/Articles/9042/ (LWN article)]

2.5.43 released October 16, 2002:
  * [http://www.psc.edu/general/filesys/afs/ Andrew File System (AFS) support]
  * [http://oprofile.sourceforge.net/ OProfile, a low-overhead profiler]
  * [http://lse.sourceforge.net/locking Read-Copy Update (RCU) Mutual Exclusion]
  * [http://www.citi.umich.edu/projects/nfsv4/ Add support for NFS v4]
  * Remove kiobufs

2.5.42 released October 12, 2002:
  * [http://www.citi.umich.edu/projects/nfsv4/ NFS v4] support [http://kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/old-2.6-bkcvs.git;a=commit;h=4aebf5c40f30cc754927f4f3d20dffa9c7162814 (commit)], [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=102927937802523&w=2 (announcement)]
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=103298446916066&w=2 ext2/ext3 large directory support: HTree index]
  * [http://us1.samba.org/samba/Linux_CIFS_client.html Add new CIFS (Common Internet File System)]
  * [http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au/IA64wiki/LargeBlockDevices Remove the 2TB block device limit]: Block devices can now access up to 16TB on 32-bit architectures, and up to 8EB on 64-bit architectures. statfs64() syscall added: statfs() couldn't handle it.
  * Improved i2o (Intelligent Input/Ouput) layer

2.5.41 released October 7, 2002:
  * NFS direct I/O [http://kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/old-2.6-bkcvs.git;a=commit;h=fef2661181855f2d70c0b4c36f76ae6db15a2b93 (commit)]

2.5.40 released October 1, 2002:
  * [http://lse.sourceforge.net/numa Parallelizing page replacement]
  * [http://lse.sourceforge.net/numa NUMA topology support
  * [http://www.brodo.de/cpufreq/ Add support for CPU clock/voltage scaling]

2.5.39 released September 27, 2002:
  * New IO scheduler ("deadline")

2.5.38 released September 22, 2002:

2.5.37 released September 20, 2002:
  * [http://users.pandora.be/bart.de.schuymer/ebtables/ Ethernet bridge tables support]
  * Remove the global tasklist

2.5.36 released September 18, 2002:
  * Hugepage support
  * [http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/ XFS filesystem from SGI]

2.5.35 released September 16, 2002:
  * Serial ATA support
  * [http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/index.html Add User-Mode Linux (UML)]

2.5.34 released September 9, 2002:
  * POSIX threading support for signals
  * [http://lse.sourceforge.net/numa discontigmem support (ia32)]

2.5.33 released August 31, 2002:
  * TCP segmentation offload
  * [http://www.sf.net/projects/lksctp SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol)]

2.5.32 released August 27, 2002:
  * [http://people.redhat.com/drepper/nptl-design.pdf Improved POSIX threading support]
  * [http://freshmeat.net/projects/linux-aio/ Asynchronous IO (aio) support]
  * Porting all input devices over to input API
  * New MTRR (Memory Type Range Register) driver

2.5.31 released August 11, 2002:
  * Support insane number of processes
  * Disk description cleanups
  * Remove incomplete SPX network stack

2.5.30 released August 1, 2002:
  * Remove khttpd

2.5.29 released July 27, 2002:
  * Strict address space accounting
  * [http://lsm.immunix.org/ Add Linux Security Module (LSM)]
  * [http://people.redhat.com/mingo/tls-patches/ Thread-Local Storage (TLS) support]

2.5.28 released July 24, 2002:
  * Remove the "Big IRQ lock"
  * Serial driver restructure

2.5.27 released July 20, 2002:
  * [http://surriel.com/patches/ New VM with reverse mappings]

2.5.26 releasaed July 16, 2002:
  * Direct pagecache <-> BIO disk I/O

2.5.25 releaseed July 5, 2002:
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=102591369418106&w=2 Faster internal kernel clock frequency]
  * Unified naming for disk devices

2.5.24 released June 20, 2002:

2.5.23 released June 19, 2002:
  * [http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rusty/patches/Hotcpu/ Hotplug CPU support]
  * [http://web.archive.org/web/20030208091619/bazar.conectiva.com.br/~acme/patches/wip/
 More complete IEEE 802.2 stack]

2.5.22 released June 17, 2002:

2.5.21 released June 9, 2002:

2.5.20 released June 3, 2002:

2.5.19 released May 29, 2002:

2.5.18 released May 25, 2002:
  * [http://falcon.sch.bme.hu/~seasons/linux/swsusp.html Software suspend (to disk & RAM)]
  * ->getattr() ->setattr() ->permission() changes

2.5.17 released May 21, 2002:
  * Move ISDN4linux to CAPI based interface
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-fsdevel&m=101586205801483&w=2 New quota system supporting plugins]

2.5.16 released May 18, 2002:

2.5.15 released May 9, 2002:

2.5.14 released May 6, 2002:
  * Bluetooth support (no longer experimental!)
  * [http://kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/old-2.6-bkcvs.git;a=commit;h=e4ca57ce9faaaecb6dc5237960ea95d067770211 Support for IDE TCQ (Tagged Command Queueing)]

2.5.13 released May 3, 2002:

2.5.12 released May 1, 2002:
  * Rewrite of the buffer layer

2.5.11 released April 29, 2002:
  * Rewrite of the framebuffer layer
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=101968599501262&w=2 Fast walk dcache]
  * [http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/ Replace old NTFS driver with NTFS TNG driver]

2.5.10 released April 24, 2002:

2.5.9 released April 22, 2002:
  * Smarter IRQ balancing

2.5.8 released April 14, 2002:
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=101231993430394&w=2 Radix-tree pagecache]
  * [http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rml/cpu-affinity Syscall interface for CPU task affinity]

2.5.7 released March 18, 2002:
  * [http://sourceforge.net/projects/acpi/ ACPI (Advanced Configuration & Power Interface)]
  * [ftp://robur.slu.se/pub/Linux/net-development/NAPI/ NAPI network interrupt mitigation]
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=101531164109904&w=2 Futexes (Fast Lightweight Userspace Semaphores]
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-video&m=101508220707263&w=2 Video for Linux (V4L) redesign]
  * [http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Tools.html New driver API for Wireless Extensions]

2.5.6 released March 8, 2002:
  * Unicode and large file support for smbfs
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=101043315213024&w=2 HDLC (High-level Data Link Control) update]
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=101426108626124&w=2 per_cpu infrastructure]
  * [http://www-124.ibm.com/jfs/ Add JFS (Journaling FileSystem from IBM)]
  * Killing kdev_t for block devices

2.5.5 released February 20, 2002:
  * [http://linuxppc64.org/ New architecture: PowerPC 64-bit (ppc64)]
  * [http://www.x86-64.org/ New architecture: AMD 64-bit (x86-64)]
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=101406121032371&w=2 Pagetables in highmem support]
  * [http://www.alsa-project.org/ Add ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture]

2.5.4 released February 11, 2002:
  * [http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/oss/pthreads/ Support for Next Generation POSIX Threading]
  * [ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rml/preempt-kernel/ Add preempt kernel option]
  * Per network protocol slabcache & sock.h
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=100942323913586&w=2 Per filesystem slabcache & fs.h]

2.5.3 released January 30, 2002:
  * [http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/mochel/doc/ New driver model & unified device tree]
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=100173574819266&w=2 PnP BIOS driver]
  * Generic Extended Attribute support
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=101077476005939&w=2 Support reiserfs external journal]
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=101121711408999&w=2 IDE layer update]
  * [http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0202.0/0260.html Untangle sched.h & fs.h include dependancies]
  * Break Configure.help into multiple files

2.5.2 released January 15, 2002:
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=100992347220716&w=2 New kernel device structure (kdev_t)]
  * [http://people.redhat.com/mingo/O(1)-scheduler/ O(1) scheduler for improved scalability]
  * [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-fsdevel&m=98307457705210&w=2 Filesystem per-process namespaces, late-boot cleanups]
  * [http://www.linux-usb.org/usb2.html Initial support for USB 2.0]

2.5.1 December 17, 2001:
  * VFS changes: Now it is possible to atomically move a subtree to another place, "mount --move olddir newdir"
  * Rewrite of the block IO (bio) layer

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CategoryReleases