On Tuesday, 16 April 2024 20:26:25 BST Grant Edwards wrote: > On 2024-04-16, Dr Rainer Woitok <rainer.woi...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Arve, > > > > On Tuesday, 2024-04-16 15:53:48 +0200, you wrote: > >> ... > >> Only LTS kernels get stabilised, so this information is readily > >> available. > > > > I'm sure I don't understand this: According to "https://www.kernel.org/"; > > kernel 6.6.27 is "longterm", but according to "eix" the most recent > > 6.6.* kernels are 6.6.22 and 6.6.23 which both are non-stable (well, I > > ran my last "sync" immediately before the profile upgrade, so this might > > not be current). I'm still using stable kernel 6.6.13 as my backup ker- > > nel, but this kernel is no longer provided by Gentoo. So, what precise- > > ly does LTS or "longterm" mean?
LTS stands for Long Term Support and it means the kernel maintainers will continue to backport bug fixes and security patches into the LTS kernels from the Mainline tree, as they progress in their development of the kernel code. When they do this backporting they bump the LTS kernel version, e.g. from 6.6.24 to 6.6.25. They will not go into this prolonged maintenance effort with the kernel's 'Stable' tree, which has a higher churn as it acquires the Mainline kernels as soon as the latter are signed for release. > That means that all gentoo-sources stable kernels are "longterm" > kernel versions on kernel.org. It does not mean that all "longterm" > kernel versions from kernel.org are available as "stable" in > gentoo-sources. > > It is a statement that "gentoo-sources stable" is a subset of > "kernel.org longterm". > > It is not a statement that the two sets are identical. > > In other words: > > "ONLY LTS kernels get stabilized." > > is a different statement from > > "ALL LTS kernels get stabilized." > > The former is true. The latter is not. Yes, precisely. This happens because Gentoo acquire the latest LTS kernel, apply various Gentoo related patches, test and eventually mark as stable the corresponding version of the gentoo-sources in portage. This process incurs some inevitable delay compared with the LTS kernel tree releases, but nevertheless the stable gentoo-sources follow the LTS releases. > > But, to get back to the beginning of this discussion: if there is a > > risk that my aging hardware possibly can less and less cope with > > newer and newer kernels, should I put something like > > > > >=sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-6.7.0 > > > > into file "package.mask" to stay with "longterm" 6.6.* kernels? > > Yes: if you want to avoid getting upgraded to 6.8 when it gets > kernel.org "longterm" status and gentoo-sources "stable" status, then > a statement like that in in package.mask will keep you on > gentoo-sources 6.6 kernels (which are "longterm" on kernel.org). > > Again: not all longterm 6.6.x kernel versions get marked as "stable" > for gentoo-sources. If you have not enabled the testing keyword for > gentoo-sources, then you'll only get the 6.6.x kernel versions that > the gentoo-sources maintainers have declared as "stable". > > -- > Grant I am not sure the assumption "... aging hardware possibly can less and less cope with newer and newer kernels" is correct. As already mentioned newer kernels have both security and bug fixes. As long as you stick with stable gentoo-sources you'll have these in your system. Later kernels also come with additional kernel drivers for new(er) hardware. You may not need/want these drivers if you do not run the latest hardware. Using 'make oldconfig' allows you to exclude such new drivers, but include new security options and/or functionality as desired. It can happen for new code to introduce some software regression. However, this is not limited to old hardware. If there is no workaround, or some patch you can apply manually to your kernel from a later release, then by all means you can mask later minor LTS releases *for a little while only* and keep an eye open for the latest releases which could have addressed the bug you suffered from. PS. Regarding your earlier question about different make *config commands and their meaning you can check the latest make help page: $ cd /usr/src/linux $ make help Then take a look at the section "Configuration targets".
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