vanilla linux
he current development model of the Linux kernel is such that Linus Torvalds makes the releases of new versions, also called the "vanilla" or "mainline" kernels, meaning that they contain the main, generic branch of development. This branch is officially released as a new version approximately every three months, after Torvalds does an initial round of integrating major changes made by all other programmers, and several rounds of bug-fix pre-releases.
In the current scheme, the main branch of development is not a traditional "stable" branch, instead it incorporates all kinds of changes, both the latest features as well as security and bug fixes. For users who do not want to risk updating to new versions containing code that may not be well tested, a separate set of "stable" branches exist, one for each released version, which are meant for people who just want the security and bug fixes, but not a whole new version. These branches are maintained by the stable team (Greg Kroah-Hartman, Chris Wright, maybe others).
Most Linux users use a kernel supplied by their Linux distribution. Some distributions ship the "vanilla" and/or "stable" kernels. However, several Linux distribution vendors (such as Red Hat and Debian) maintain another set of Linux kernel branches which are integrated into their products. These are by and large updated at a slower pace compared to the "vanilla" branch, and they usually include all fixes from the relevant "stable" branch, but at the same time they can also add support for drivers or features which had not been released in the "vanilla" version the distribution vendor started basing their branch from.