Streamlining Stability

Artem S. Tashkinov was alarmed by the sheer number of security issues Linux had recently been faced with, "including Copy Fail (CVE-2026-31431), Dirty Frag (CVE-2026-43284/500), Fragnesia (CVE-2026-46300), and the ptrace exit race (CVE-2026-46333)." He went on to say, "When fatal logic flaws or memory corruptions strike core subsystems, our current point-release model fractures. Spinning up whole new point releases (7.0.4, 7.0.5, 7.0.7) in a matter of days just to address incomplete fixes, subsystem regressions, or independent public disclosures (such as the recent GRO managed-frag UAF exploit dropped directly to GitHub gists by researchers) creates massive administrative fatigue for maintainers and downstream teams alike."

Artem concluded, "Upstream has long maintained that the stable tree is effectively a continuous stream of fixes, and that users should track the tip of the stable branch rather than cherry-picking. It is time our release infrastructure matches this reality."

His solution: "we should treat the stable sub-version purely as an append-only, continuous, git-native patch stream." And specifically, "Major releases (e.g., 7.0, 7.1) remain the foundational code boundaries, but sub-versions are eliminated as monolithic manual artifacts."

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