I said this last week on Google+ when I was at a conference, and needed to get it out there quickly, but as I keep getting emails and other queries about this, I might as make it “official” here. For no other reason that it provides a single place for me to point people at.

Anyway, I would like to announce that the 3.8 Linux kernel series is NOT going to be a longterm stable kernel release. I will NOT be maintaining it for long time, and in fact, will stop maintaining it right after the 3.9 kernel is released.

The 3.0 and 3.4 kernel releases are both longterm, and both are going to be maintained by me for at least 2 years. If I were to pick 3.8 right now, that would mean I would be maintaining 3 longterm kernels, plus whatever “normal” stable kernels are happening at that time. That is something that I can not do without loosing even more hair than I currently have. To do so would be insane to attempt.

Hopefully this puts to rest all of the rumors.