14 DAY TRIAL // Linux kernel 4.1.15 was released today by Greg Kroah-Hartman, in a branch that was declared LTS a while back. More importantly, it's also the Linux kernel that powers Arnold's T-800 Terminator model.
I wrote almost a year ago about the inevitable launch of the new 4.x branch of the Linux kernel. In February 2015, Linus was not sold just yet on the idea of moving from Linux kernel 3.20 to 4.0, but that was a possibility that was floating around.
A Reddit user spotted the fact that the original T-800 terminator unit used by Arnold Schwarzenegger was actually running Linux kernel 4.1.15, and from the looks of it, it's a fork; let's call it the Skynet edition. This would mean that the AI actually cared about open source.
The time of the Terminator is now
There was a time when it was hard to believe that we'd ever get past the 2.x branch of the kernel, but it happened. The community also spent an eternity with the 3.x branch, but we're now at 4.x, and the latest 4.1.15 is now out.
Linux kernel 4.1.x is an LTS version, as Greg Kroah-Hartman informed us a while back, so it makes sense for Skynet to choose it for its deadly machines. You need stability and long-term support when you send a killing cyborg back in time.
We're all joking now about cyborgs and terminators, but a lot of high profile people like Elon Musk, for example, are warning us about the power of a potential AI, so maybe the people who wrote that into the Terminator movie were not all that far off.
All kidding aside, you can download Linux kernel 4.1.15 LTS right now from Softpedia, or you wait until it gets uploaded to your repository. If it's any consolation, this particular update for the kernel is not even that important.