Kernel 4.3 is the sequel to the existing 4.2 and weighs in with nearly an extra million lines of code. In fact the next version, tentatively titled 4.4, is estimated to have 21 million lines of code. These are huge increases given that Linux started out as super small.

More than 70 percent of the changes are to drivers, while just 10 percent are architectural. Linux can now support AMD R9 Fury graphics chips and there are SMP scheduler optimisations and fixes to the file system.

Supreme Linux Darlek Linus Torvalds said this upgrade had a few problems on its x86 vm86 mode which had to be fixed at the last minute.

"The vm86 mode thing was a one-liner... it was slightly more nerve-racking because it looked scarier than it was before people figured out what was going on."

Top contributors to the kernel are Red Hat with 5.9 percent of commits, Intel with 5.32 and the Linux Foundation itself at 3.14 (they deserve a Pi). Suse, Linaro, Texas Instruments and Samsung are also high on the list. Surprisingly Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, didn't crack the top 10 contributors on this occasion.

The next release, version 4.4, is set to be a long-term support release, which you can expect to see headed into the next generation of Linux flavours.