On 2024-04-17, Michael <confabul...@kintzios.com> wrote: >> > 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).
> I am not sure the assumption "... aging hardware possibly can less and less > cope with newer and newer kernels" is correct. Good point. My "yes" was in response to a question of the form "if X is true, should I do Y". I did not attempt to address the likelyhood that X was actually ture, only whether Y was appropriate if X was true. > 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. The usual worries with running newer kernels on older hardware are: 1) Performance degradation when upgrading kernels on older hardware. On one embedded project I work with we're still running a 2.6 kernel because network throughput drops by 25-30% when we upgrade to 3.x kernels. There's nothing "wrong" with those 3.x kernels, they're just bigger and significantly slower. [Even when built with a config that's as identical to the 2.6 kernels as possible.] 2) Lack of support for old hardware when running a newer kernels. I used to run into this when running nvidia-drivers. Gentoo-sources would mark a new kernel stable, but my video board would not be supported by nvidia-drivers versions that were supported for that new stable kernel. I would mask newer kernels until and run older "longterm" kernels as long as I could. I would evenually be forced to buy a new video card. After going through that cycle a couple times, I swore off NVidia video cards and life's been much eaiser since.