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Linux kernel version numbers (Greg Kroah-Hartman's blog)
(www.kroah.com)
"Simple". That's not simple.
It sounds just the same as every other branched development model.
"Every version is stable" is definitely not "just like every other branched model". Why not just have an increasing number or date as a version number if everything is stable? The major and minor numbers don't make in this way if "everything is stable".
Every release version is stable. That's bog standard in software development. For the kernel, unstable versions are not release versions, they are release candidates.
And they do just have an incremented number, as described in the article. Within each branch, for each release, they just increment the release number (which most people, and semver, call patch). Linux is pretty close to semver post-2.6, but I don't think they limit releases within a minor branch to just bug fixes.
Every version is stable in linux means no version breaks userspace. Semver's major version literally breaks the contract. It's what it's for.
And even if we literally meant stable as in "this is expected to work", no, that is nowhere near normal in my experience. There are countless projects and companies with "test in production" mentalities. Then there are distros like Ubuntu and nixos that always have an unstable and/or a testing release, which is by definition not stable.
So, no, every version is stable is definitely not the norm in my experience.
I'm a simple man: bigger numbers mean newer version. And that's enough for me :)
this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2025
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