Linux Kernel 4.19 & 5.4 life cycle extended to 6 years

Recently, Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux kernel developer and maintainer, announced that the end of life (EOL) support for Linux kernel versions 4.19 and 5.4 will be extended from two years to six years, to 2024 and 2025 respectively.

The Linux kernel is mainly divided into a stable version and a long-term support version. The stable version is released every 8-10 weeks; the long-term version is every two years and will provide security and bug fixes in the next two years.

Generally speaking, the maintainer of the LTS kernel version is responsible for determining the period of the LTS life cycle. In 2017, Google senior engineer Iliyan Malchev announced that the Linux kernel team agreed to extend the maintenance period of the long-term support version (LTS) of some Linux from two years to six years. This is also the first time that the life cycle of the LTS kernel has been extended. This change has been implemented since Linux Kernel 4.4.

Currently, there are six LTS cores supported for six years, namely: 5.4, 4.19, 4.14, 4.9, 4.4, and 3.6 versions.