The Open Enterprise Linux Association (OpenELA) has stepped up to maintain Linux kernel version 4.14 – which went out of support in January – until the end of the year. But why that particular version?
Linus Torvald's guided tour of his home office
In the first announcement from OpenELA this year, the organization announced ongoing maintenance for kernel 4.14 last week. You can find the source code on GitHub, where the extended end date is listed as December 2024.
This support addition is good news for anyone still running older kernels in production, but also, in context, a little puzzling.
As we reported last September, the team that maintains the Linux kernel decided to reduce the supported lifetime of the older versions of the long-term support kernels that it maintains, and the oldest version still supported – 4.14, released way back in November 2017 – was shelved . . In January, LTS kernel supervisor Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the final version, 4.14.336, marking the end of life for the oldest supported version of the kernel.
