On 2024-04-17, Dr Rainer Woitok <rainer.woi...@gmail.com> wrote: > Grant, > > On Tuesday, 2024-04-16 19:26:25 -0000, you wrote: > >> ... >> 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". > > This sort of deteriorates into a debate about words rather than meanings
I'm sorry to have caused "deterioration" by trying to explain the statement you said a) you didn't understand and b) was contridicted by the contents of the gentoo portage tree. The statement was not contridicted by what you pointed out. > without explaining HOW LONG such a series of related kernels are > main- tained and provided. That was not the subject of the statement you claimed was wrong which I then tried to explain. The gentoo-sources versions of upstream "longterm" kernels are maintained and provided for as long as the volunteers who do the work maintain and provide them. > After all, "longterm" or "LTS" suggest that these lines of > developement are less short-lived than others. They are. Upstream longterm kernel versions get updates for several years longer than versions that are not longterm. > To give an ex- ample: the oldest "longterm" kernels listed on > "kernel.org" are 4.19.*, 5.4.* and 5.10.*. Of these only 5.10.* is > still available from Gentoo. You should certainly demand that all of the money you paid for gentoo-sources be refunded. It takes work to maintain gentoo-sources ebuilds. I'm sure if you volunteered to maintain ebuilds for the older longterm kernels, the help would be happily accepted. Free clue: It's _hard_work_ to support old verions of things (especially kernels). They usually won't build with recent tools and won't run on recent hardware or with recent versions of other software. You often have to keep around entire virtual machines that have old tools and utilities. If what you want is access to all upstream longeterm kernel versions, then you should be using sys-kernel/vanilla-sources. > So what time span are we talking about when we say "LTS Gentoo > kernel"? We don't say that. "LTS" and "longterm" are not Gentoo designations, they are kernel.org designations. Gentoo has "stable" and "testing". Only upstream "longterm" kernel versions get marked as "stable" in gentoo-sources. They are then supported for as long as somebody supports them. > Roughly four, three or two years? And why is the support provided > by Gentoo significantly shorter than that by "kernel.org"? Because you're not helping with the support? -- Grant
