On Sunday 21 Aug 2016 10:50:55 Rich Freeman wrote: > On Sun, Aug 21, 2016 at 10:23 AM, Peter Humphrey <pe...@prh.myzen.co.uk> wrote: > > On Sunday 21 Aug 2016 07:28:17 Rich Freeman wrote: > >> ... there is nothing wrong with having some internal QA on kernel > >> releases. 4.1 had a nasty memory leak a release or two ago that was > >> killing my system after only an hour or two uptime. They took over a > >> week to stabilize the fix as well (though a patch was out fairly > >> quickly). So, I'm not in nearly the rush to update kernels as I used > >> to be> > > I've formed the impression that a good many kernel updates are mainly > > just to incorporate code for new devices, so I don't rush into it > > normally either. However, this box does have some hardware that's not > > yet a year old, so I do keep this one up to date. > > The 3rd decimal almost never has code for new devices. It is intended > to be 100% bugfixes. So, you generally don't want to be too far > behind on that. > > >> (granted, unless you read all the lists it is easy to miss this sort of > >> thing). > > > > Do you recommend any in particular for this? Gentoo-dev, perhaps? > > Nope. That memory leak was on lkml I think. Only reason I spotted it > was that I searched for it after getting bitten by it. I doubt I'd > have even noticed the thread but for looking for it. I do tend to > search the btrfs lists before switching between series, because that > is the thing I figure is most likely to break. > > Honestly, kernel QA could be better in some ways. When some crippling > bug comes along they don't always rush to release fixes, and they > don't have any way to communicate with end-users. They just assume > that distros are paying attention to that sort of thing. And most > probably are (probably including Gentoo, but I'm not running a Gentoo > kernel since the Gentoo kernels aren't really going to be optimized > for btrfs stability). > > >> I ended up bailing on gentoo-sources all the same. Not that there was > >> really anything wrong with it, but since I'm running btrfs and they've > >> had a history of nasty regressions that tend to show up MONTHS later > >> I've been a lot more picky about my kernel updates. I'm currently > >> tracking 4.1. I might think about moving to 4.4 in a little while. > > > > Well, according to eix, there's only 4.4.19 between 4.1.30 and 4.7.2. > > Those are just the versions packaged for Gentoo. > kernel.org has 4.4.19 as the only non-EOL version in-between, and it > is longterm (I think 4.7 is too, but it isn't marked as such yet). > > > Sound policy, I'm sure. How does an ordinary mortal know which versions > > are here for the long term? > > kernel.org > > The Gentoo team will not let down ordinary users. If you're using > semi-experimental features then you're best off keeping a close eye on > upstream no matter what distro you use.
OK. Thanks for your advice, Rich, as always. Also to Alarig. -- Rgds Peter
