The Linux Foundation has announced a long-term support cycle for the Linux kernel branch 6.1. Support will be provided under the SLTS (Super Long Term Support) program, which, unlike LTS (Long Term Support) releases, includes a longer support cycle aimed at using the kernel in civil infrastructure technical systems and critical industrial systems. Updates for the Linux 6.1 branch will be released for at least 10 years, during which not only reliability and security patches will be backported, but also improvements from newer branches to support new hardware. A similar extended support cycle was previously applied to the 4.4, 4.19, and 5.10 kernels.
To track updates in the SLTS branch 6.1, a git repository linux-cip has been proposed. The SLTS branch will be maintained by the Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) project, which operates under the auspices of the Linux Foundation, and involves companies such as Toshiba, Siemens, Renesas, Bosch, Hitachi, and MOXA. In addition to representatives from the aforementioned companies, maintainers of the LTS branches of the main kernel, Debian developers, and the creators of the KernelCI project will also be involved in supporting the SLTS kernel.
List of LTS branches supported by Linux kernel developers:
- 6.1 — until December 2026 + support within SLTS (used in Debian 12).
- 5.15 — until October 2026 (used in Ubuntu 22.04, Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 7, and OpenWRT master).
- 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).
- 4.14 — until January 2024.
Source: opennet.ru
