(6.9-4.2)/(2024-2018) = 0.45 “version increments” per year.

4.2/(2018-1991) = 0.15 “version increments” per year.

So, the pace of version increases in the past 6 years has been around triple the average from the previous 27 years, since Linux’ first release.

I guess I can see why 6.9 would seem pretty dramatic for long-time Linux users.

I wonder whether development has actually accelerated, or if this is just a change in the approach to the release/versioning process.

If you include ChromeOS that’s very likely.

Tbf 500ms latency on - IIRC - a loopback network connection in a test environment is a lot. It’s not hugely surprising that a curious engineer dug into that.