How does kernel version numbering work?

[mahela007]

I've already googled this but the only reliable source I could come up with was wikipedia. But I find that it's not very clear. In addition, it doesn't mention what dashes " - " mean in the numbers. I'd really appreciate a good, complete explanation..

[oz]

Version numbering is explained in the Linux Kernel article found at Wikipedia:

Linux kernel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[mahela007]

I said.. I already read that..
I doesn't seem to give the full picture...
on launchpad bug reports I frequently see stuff like
2.6.31-14.x
what does that mean?

[oz]

I said.. I already read that..
I doesn't seem to give the full picture...
on launchpad bug reports I frequently see stuff like
2.6.31-14.x
what does that mean?

Oops! Sorry... I missed that you had already read the wikipedia article. I can't really explain it any better than that, but perhaps someone else will be able to do so.

The x in your example above means any subsequent version of a particular kernel. For example, the 2.6.32.x version would include the 2.6.32 kernel and all in that series, such as 2.6.32.1, 2.6.32.2, etc.

[mahela007]

Thanks... Anyone know about the ' - ' ?

[reed9]

I think everything after the 4 basic numbers denoting the kernel and patch version are distro specific.

In Arch, for example, the current kernel is 2.6.31.6-1. The -1 here is the release number specific to Arch. If they tweaked the build script, but otherwise it was unchanged, they would release it as 2.6.31.6-2.

Other distros have similar schemes, so I would assume in this case the -14.x would be the 14th release of that kernel for this distro, and the .x probably indicates some other minor tweak.