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Does anyone know if there has been any guidance or discussion on when a 7.x release might become a longterm supported release?

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The kernel doesn't follow conventional semver practices, meaning that the major number incrementing has no effect beyong the minor number got too large. So there's nothing inherently different in a 7.X release from a 6.X release.

Either way, an LTS appears to be released ~every 6th version, 6.18 is the newest LTS, so after that there's 6.19, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4 maybe LTS?

kernel.org has a nice FAQ about this topic.

https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html

I'm surprised the FAQ does not mention it, but the pattern is that the last release of the year is made the LTS version. Notice the release date is always EOY. This is nothing strictly documented but it has been that way for years.

edit: it is on purpose that gkh doesn't make that an official stance, see reason here: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/Y8JnHyKNTHMjsHSb@kroah.com/

Thank you!

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