Live patching will be implemented in Linux kernel 3.20

Feb 13, 2015 11:00 GMT  ·  By

Live patching is the hottest trend when we’re talking about Linux kernel-based operating systems. It was created by SUSE, based on KGraft, and distributed in the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server distribution at the end of 2014. Everyone knows that Linux systems don’t require a reboot every time some packages have been updated, except for the kernel. Well, this is not the case anymore with live patching.

In a world where you have to do at least one or two reboots per week of your Windows computer every time some packages have been updated (not to mention the long wait times for some updates to be applied), Linux-powered machines - which we have to admit that are updated more often than Windows OSes - barely require a reboot.

Why live patching is an amazing feature for Linux kernel-based operating systems

Just imagine that most of the Internet’s websites are powered by servers running GNU/Linux OSes like Debian, CentOS or Gentoo. At the moment, there are over 1 billion websites worldwide. Now imagine that none of these websites will ever have a downtime to do server reboots when upgrading the kernel packages to patch zero-day vulnerabilities.

What end-users need to know about Linux kernel live patching is that they won’t have to reboot their computers anymore, not even when the kernel is updated. Live patching provides zero system interruption, so you can keep your GNU/Linux OS up to date at all times while continuing to work on your most important projects.

When will Linux kernel live patching arrive to distributions?

This is a very good question, because all we know right now is that live patching will be the main feature of the forthcoming Linux kernel 3.20, which should be released sometime this year, but when and if Linux 3.20 kernel will arrive on your GNU/Linux distribution depends entirely on the respective operating system vendor. Read more about Linux kernel live patching at SUSE.