[Intel-wired-lan] General question regarding i40e driver version in upstream kernel

[Arkady Gilinsky]

Hi All,

I have a general question related to i40e driver in Linux kernel.
In latest Ubuntu-20.04 release (Focal) with kernel 5.4.0-42-generic the standard i40e driver is quite old (2.8.20-k),
while on Intel official site recently was announced newer i40e (2.12.6).
Also, the latest upstream kernel is 5.8.3 has the same (2.8.20-k) version of i40e driver.
See here: https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/i40e/i40e_main.c#L28

Could, anybody from driver maintainers, clarify why there is such a big gap in versions of i40e driver.
Do all the drivers, from 2.8.20-k version, not stable enough, so they were not taken into kernel upstream?

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Best regards,
Arkady Gilinsky

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