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Hi can some one help me in understanding this.

On Centos 6.2 its showing kernel as 2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64

whereas on Ubuntu 12.04 its showing as 3.2.0-23-generic.

3.0 kernel is one of the latest kernel and Ubuntu is using that, whereas Centos is using an old kernel. Why is it so?

Can an old kernel offer every new feature that a new kernel can? Why aren't they upgrading to 3.0?

Banjer
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kevin
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  • Note than you *could* get a newer kernel (currently 3.0 and 3.7) from the ELrepo repository, but I would not recommend this (at all!) as this combination is not nearly as good tested as the stock kernel coming with CentOS and this could come and bite you in many unexpected ways. – Sven Jan 31 '13 at 13:21

2 Answers2

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The reason that CentOS doesn't provide a newer kernel is because it is a rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and that doesn't provide a newer kernel. RHEL takes a somewhat conservative approach to upgrades and new features, preferring instead to provide a stable platform with long term support. Bug and security patches are backported into this environment.

user9517
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  • For completionists sake it's worth noting that CentOS/RHEL 6 is forked off of Fedora 12 (2009) with some things backported from Fedora 13 and 14 (both 2010). – Scott Pack Feb 06 '13 at 02:55
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This is a key difference between a distribution like Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS.

Ubuntu simply moves faster than CentOS/RHEL. This is by design, as a fast-moving platform is not an ideal target for bigger businesses and applications that value consistency or stability.

Red Hat makes an effort to keep versions the same throughout the supported lifecycle of the products, but will reengineer critical updates and newer package features into the older versions.

Community
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ewwhite
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