[ANNOUNCEMENT] Kubernetes 1.29 Mandala Released

[Priyanka Saggu]

Hello Kubernetes Community,

Kubernetes v1.29 Mandala ✨🌌 has been released with v1.29.0 now available 🎉.
More details can be found in the Kubernetes v1.29 blog post [0] and in the release notes [1].

Packages for v1.29.0 are available via the GitHub Releases page [2].
Debian and RPM packages are available through package managers.
For details please see the email from the Branch Managers [3].

Additionally, code freeze for v1.29 has been lifted and both kubernetes/kubernetes and kubernetes/website are now thawed.
Thank you so much for your patience during this extended freeze.

This release is the work of hundreds of folks across our community, in a truly distributed team.
The biggest possible *THANK YOU* to the 1.29 Release Team [4], SIG Release, and every contributor who made this release possible!

Thank you all once again, and have a great holiday season ahead!

Priyanka Saggu
Kubernetes v1.29 Release Team Lead
On behalf of the Kubernetes 1.29 Release Team [4]

[0] https://kubernetes.io/blog/2023/12/13/kubernetes-v1-29-release
[1] https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/CHANGELOG/CHANGELOG-1.29.md
[2] https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/releases/tag/v1.29.0
[3] https://groups.google.com/a/kubernetes.io/g/dev/c/3A6mRb2n6W0/m/hRGwSzVhAQAJ
[4] https://github.com/kubernetes/sig-release/blob/master/releases/release-1.29/release-team.md