Linux 5.10 LTS Released As One Of The Biggest Kernel Releases In A While

As expected, Linus Torvalds today officially released Linux 5.10. Besides being the last kernel release of 2020, this is a significant milestone in that it's also a Long Term Support (LTS) kernel to be maintained for at least the next five years and also is a huge kernel update in general with many new features.

Linux 5.10 features new hardware support including early bring-up around Intel Rocket Lake and Alder Lake, continued work on Intel Gen12/Xe Graphics, a number of storage/file-system improvements, and more. See our 10 most interesting features of Linux 5.10 or our complete Linux 5.10 feature overview.

Of Linux 5.10 final, Linus Torvalds wrote in the release announcement, "I pretty much always wish that the last week was even calmer than it was, and that's true here too. There's a fair amount of fixes in here, including a few last-minute reverts for things that didn't get fixed, but nothing makes me go "we need another week". Things look fairly normal."

Linux 5.10 LTS is likely the kernel to be used by Debian 11, Mageia 8, and others. For the likes of Fedora 34 and Ubuntu 21.04 we are more likely to see Linux 5.11 at play.

Now onward to the Linux 5.11 merge window and the many features on tap. Due to the second week of the Linux 5.11 merge window being the Christmas holiday week, Linus says he will be more strict than usual about only accepting tested/ready code and will not be accepting pull requests for last minute material that looks like it hasn't been well tested yet.