It's unlikely that another kernel version will be ready until the launch

Jun 4, 2014 20:41 GMT  ·  By

The development of Ubuntu 14.10 has been underway for a couple of months already, but things are just starting to shape up for the operating system from Canonical and it looks like the devs have decided what kernel version they will be pursuing.

It’s difficult to say what Linux kernel will be integrated in Ubuntu 14.10, but some estimates can be done. The Ubuntu developers are looking to settle with Linux kernel 3.16 as their target, but that is not set in stone and things can still change before launch.

The development cycle of Ubuntu is six months and the development cycle for the Linux kernel is about 2-3 months. Right now, Linus Torvalds is preparing to release the stable 3.15 branch, which means that Linux kernel 3.16 might be out by the end of August or the beginning of September.

The kernel freeze for Ubuntu 14.10 is set to October 2, but the team needs to pick a version well before then. Whatever version they choose, they need to test it before integrating it in the operating system.

Given the development cycle of the kernel, it is unlikely that they will be able to adopt 3.17, which might not be ready in time. The same happened with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, which ended up with Linux kernel 3.13. This particular branch was the latest one available, so the devs had no choice but to add it to the distribution.

The 3.14 branch of the kernel launched a couple of weeks before the release of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, but it was way too late to do anything about it. This left Canonical with a kernel that soon reached end of life and in the position of having to do the maintenance themselves.

“We have most recently rebased our Utopic kernel to v3.15-rc8 and uploaded (3.15.0-5.10). We are planning on converging on the v3.16 kernel for Utopic. It also appears that the Utopic release date has been pushed out a week to Thurs Oct 23 in order to not conflict with the Linux Plumbers Conference,” said Canonical’s Joseph Salisbury in the regular Ubuntu Kernel Team meeting.

Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) is now using Linux kernel 3.15 RC8, but that will change very soon after the final version of that kernel is released.

The launch date for Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) has been set for October 23, which means that we are still a long way off and that the bulk of the features haven’t been implemented yet.