Linus Torvalds: Linux Kernel “v5.0 will happen some day”

After the release of the Linux kernel 4.16, Linus Torvalds said the next kernel will be version 5.0 or maybe not because the version number is meaningless. On Thursday, Torvalds released the news about the first candidate version of 4.17. He warned that it was not a particularly large version and questioned which version number was more valued in the final version.

“But v5.0 will happen some day. And it should be meaningless. You have been warned.

Anyway, we do have a *few* other things that happened, like Arnd getting rid of a number of architectures that seem to simply not matter any more. If it turns out that somebody wants to resurrect any of them, the code is all there in the git history, but you’ll have to do the work and show that you’ll maintain it and have a few users.“

It noted that the 4.17 RC1 version of the kernel is now the first in the history of Linux to remove the code number is greater than the number of added core code.

“End result: we actually removed more lines than we added:

13538 files changed, 627723 insertions(+), 818855 deletions(-)

which is probably a first. Ever. In the history of the universe. Or at
least kernel releases.“