The OpenELA Association (Open Enterprise Linux Association), formed last year by CIQ (Rocky Linux), Oracle, and SUSE to coordinate efforts for RHEL compatibility, has launched the kernel-lts project, which will provide additional support for some outdated LTS branches of the kernel after their official support ends.
The first kernel to receive additional support will be branch 4.14, which was released in November 2017 and supported for 6 years. In January, the main kernel development team ceased support for this branch. OpenELA has resumed support, and updates for kernel 4.14 will be released at least until December 2024. Following the final release of Linux kernel 4.14.336, the OpenELA team has already released extended updates 4.14.337-openela, 4.14.338-openela, and 4.14.339-openela.
The support provided by OpenELA will adhere to the same rules and processes used for standard stable LTS kernels. No additional restrictions, such as binding to specific hardware or products, will be introduced. Updates will be released based on monitoring fixes from current kernel branches and their incorporation into the supported extended LTS branches.
In addition to extended support for LTS kernel branches, the OpenELA association is maintaining a repository of packages that can be used as a basis for creating distributions that are fully binary-compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, identical in behavior (at the error level) to RHEL, and suitable as a replacement for RHEL. The repository is supported by the collaborative efforts of the teams from RHEL-compatible distributions Rocky Linux, Oracle Linux, and SUSE Liberty Linux, and includes packages necessary for forming distributions compatible with RHEL versions 8 and 9 (with RHEL 7 planned). The OpenELA repository has taken the place of the git.centos.org repository, which was discontinued by Red Hat.
Kernel developers continue to maintain the following long-term branches of the Linux kernel:
- 6.6 — until December 2026 (used in Ubuntu 24.04).
- 6.1 — until December 2026 + support under SLTS (used in Debian 12 and the main branch of OpenWRT).
- 5.15 — until October 2026 (used in Ubuntu 22.04, Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 7 and OpenWRT 23.05).
- 5.10 — until December 2026 + support within SLTS (used in Debian 11, Android 12 and OpenWRT 22).
- 5.4 — until December 2025 (used in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and in Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 6)
- 4.19 — until December 2024 + support under SLTS (used in Debian 10 and in Android 10).
Separately based on kernels 4.4, 4.19, 5.10, and 6.1, the Linux Foundation provides SLTS (Super Long Term Support) branches, which are supported separately and maintained for 10-20 years. SLTS branches are supported within the Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) project, which includes companies such as Toshiba, Siemens, Renesas, Bosch, Hitachi, and MOXA, as well as LTS branch maintainers, Debian developers, and creators of the KernelCI project. SLTS kernels are aimed at applications in civil infrastructure technical systems and in critical industrial systems.
Source: opennet.ru
