The Apache Hadoop community has voted to release Apache Hadoop 2.5.0. Apache Hadoop 2.5.0 is a minor release in the 2.x release line and includes some major features and improvements (Extended File Attributes and Improved Web UIs in HDFS, Security for ATS, Richer YARN REST APIs) as well as several bug fixes. More details can be found in the documentation <http://hadoop.apache.org/docs/r2.5.0/> and release notes <http://hadoop.apache.org/docs/r2.5.0/hadoop-project-dist/hadoop-common/releasenotes.html> .
The next minor release (2.6.0) is expected to include some major features as well - Transparent encryption in HDFS along with a Key Management Server, work-preserving restarts of all YARN daemons among others. Refer to the roadmap <http://wiki.apache.org/hadoop/Roadmap> for a full, updated list. Cheers! Karthik
