In contrast to
semantic versioning, the major version carries no intrinsic meaning for the kernel, as Linux promises stable interfaces and behavior even across major versions. Rather, since version 3.x, minor versions are capped around 20, to avoid the false perception that changes between large minor versions (e.g. from X.30 to X.31) would be smaller than changes between X.1 and X.2. Each feature release identified by the first two numbers of a release version is designated one of the following levels of support: • Supported until next stable version and 3 months after that. •
Long-term support (LTS); maintained for a few years. • Super-long-term support (SLTS); maintained for many more years by the Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP). ==Overview==