Techradar is taking an in-depth look inside the Linux kernel 3.0

The new Linux 3.0 kernel in all its shiny awesomeness will be finding its way into your favourite distro any day now. So what does this major milestone release contain to justify the jump in version number? The short answer is nothing really - this is just 2.6.40 renamed. Linus Torvalds felt the numbers were getting too high, that the 2.6.* notation was getting out of hand, and that Linux had now entered its third decade, so a new number was called for. Torvalds said: We are very much not doing a KDE 4 or a Gnome 3 here, no breakage, no special scary new features, nothing at all like that. We've been doing time-based releases for many years now, this is in no way about features. If you want an excuse for the renumbering, you really should look at the time-based one (20 years) instead. The old numbering system used the first digit for the major release - which has been 2 for what seems like forever - and the second for the minor release, using odd numbers to show development versions and even numbers for stable releases.

  In Depth: Inside the Linux kernel 3.0