Despite having a stable release model and cadence since December 2003, Linux
kernel version numbers seem to baffle and confuse those that run across them,
causing numerous groups to mistakenly make versioning statements that are flat
out false. So let’s go into how this all works in detail.
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 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.