glibc Versions

glibc.md

glibc Versions

List of oldest supported version of top 10 Linux Distros and their glibc version according to distrowatch.com.

Summary

Out of all versions with published EOLs, 2.12 is the oldest glibc still active, found in CentOS 6.8.

If CentOS 6 and 7 are eliminated, the oldest glibc is 2.23 in Ubuntu and Slackware.

Details

Mint - 18.3 sylvia

• EOL: 2021-04
• glibc: 2.27

Ubuntu

18.04 LTS bionic

• EOL: 2023-04
• glibc: 2.27

16.04 LTS xenial

• EOL: 2021-04
• glibc: 2.23

MX Linux - 17.1

• EOL: None (Based on Debian 9 which has no EOL yet)
• glibc: 2.24
• Notes: MX-16 is based on Debian 8 which is EOL 2020-05

Arch Linux - 2020.01.22

• EOL: Rolling release
• glibc: 2.30

Gentoo - 2020-01-22

• EOL: Rolling release
• glibc: 2.29

Slackware - 14.2

• EOL: None
• glibc: 2.23
• NOTE: No EOLs are published. 14.2 was released in 2016. Older versions have libc < 2.17.

Debian - 9 stretch

• EOL: None announced
• glibc: 2.24

Fedora - 30

• EOL: None announced
• glibc: 2.29

OpenSUSE - 15.1

• EOL: None announced
• glibc: 2.26

CentOS

6.10

• EOL: 2020-11
• glibc: 2.12

7.7.1908

• EOL: 2024-06
• glibc: 2.17

8.1.1911

• EOL: None announced
• glibc: 2.28

FreeBSD - 10.3

• EOL: 2018-04
• glibc: N/A

thanks for this

This is great, thanks

@xuyang2 thanks!

CentOS 6 is dead, isn't it? So now the oldest one is from CentOS 7: 2.17 (until 2024)

BTW, CentOS 8 is dead (or really, will be in a few days). But there's Rocky Linux replacing it, which has a much greater support. You could update the page with Rocky Linux info.

This is incredibly useful, thank you

DistroWatch list glibc versions for all distributions and is regularly updated e.g. https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=redhat

@Zaraka that's where I got the information. The problem is that DistroWatch doesn't put the info all in one place for different distros and EOLs.

@wagenet @xuyang2

Please add Rocky Linux, and it would also be nice to see the obsolete systems disapear (or get red) in the list.

I pulled this info from Distrowatch and that is still going to be the best place to get up to date data. However, they don't provide a good way to look at all this info at once which is why I made this.

I don't really have the time (or current need) to keep this list consistently up to date. It's too bad that there's no way to target PRs at gists. It could make sense to make a single-file repo for this very reason. If someone does that, I can add a link at the top of this gist.

Arch Linux is on glibc 2.35

thanks

CentOS 6 is dead, isn't it? So now the oldest one is from CentOS 7: 2.17 (until 2024)

Then, Debian Jessie uses glibc 2.19, which will live until mid-2025.

Then, SLE 12 uses glibc 2.22, which will live until Oct-2027.

Then SLE 15 uses glibc 2.26, which will live until 2031. That's far enough for me.

Alternative: https://repology.org/project/glibc/versions

@mxmlnkn thanks!

Just published a little helper script, that parses distrowatch. It may help, if you want to know, whether a linux distro supports a special package version, e.g.: give me the first ubuntu release, that supports glibc-2.14.
https://github.com/fsonnenburg/get_linux_version_for_package_version/blob/main/get_linux_version_for_package_version.py