On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 3:35 PM james <gar...@verizon.net> wrote: > > I use a 3.18.40 kernel, currently, on one of my AMD systems. It has > thousands of source build packages, not only from portage but many others.
Keep in mind that you're running a non-longterm kernel, which means that if there is a known regression or security issue in your kernel, a kernel update to fix it wouldn't be provided upstream. If you were running 3.16 or 4.4 you would get these updates. If you plan to stick with a kernel for a very long time you should try to pick one that is designated as a longterm kernel. 3.16.85 was released just a week ago. It obviously doesn't get very frequent updates, but if something important comes along they'll release a fix. I'd have to check the timelines but you might have unmitigated Spectre vulnerabilities in that kernel. Also, you mention AMD. If you happen to be using a Ryzen processor there were a number of updates to the kernel to better support it. I forget which kernels have these but if you don't have those patches you'd probably benefit from an upgrade. If you have a pre-Ryzen CPU then that won't matter much. I completely agree that you can get away with a longterm kernel and there are a lot of reasons for doing so. I just recommend sticking with one that actually is supported. -- Rich
