Re: [PATCH 4.4 00/37] 4.4.110-stable review

[Greg Kroah-Hartman]

On Tue, Jan 09, 2018 at 01:49:48PM -0600, Serge E. Hallyn wrote:
> Quoting Greg Kroah-Hartman (gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx):
> > On Sat, Jan 06, 2018 at 02:20:16AM +0900, Alice Ferrazzi wrote:
> > > On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 5:11 AM, Greg Kroah-Hartman
> > > <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > This is the start of the stable review cycle for the 4.4.110 release.
> > > > There are 37 patches in this series, all will be posted as a response
> > > > to this one.  If anyone has any issues with these being applied, please
> > > > let me know.
> > > >
> > > > Responses should be made by Fri Jan  5 19:50:38 UTC 2018.
> > > > Anything received after that time might be too late.
> > > >
> > > > The whole patch series can be found in one patch at:
> > > >         kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/stable-review/patch-4.4.110-rc1.gz
> > > > or in the git tree and branch at:
> > > >   git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable-rc.git linux-4.4.y
> > > > and the diffstat can be found below.
> > > >
> > > 
> > > This patchset merges correctly with Gentoo patches and GCC version 6.4.0
> > > The kernel boot up correctly.
> > > Logs: http://kernel1.amd64.dev.gentoo.org:8010/#/builders/5/builds/44
> > 
> > Great, but Gentoo really should be moving to 4.9 and 4.14 here, I
> > hope no one running Gentoo is relying on 4.4 :)
> 
> Wait what?
> 
> According to https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html
> 4.4 should be the best bet for longest support, right?  Does
> that page need to be updated?  If 4.4 is not going to be
> supported, is there anything else with a possible 5-6 years
> of support?

4.4 is going to be supported, yes, but really, for a desktop/server
system, why would you ever want to stick with it for anything longer
than a year?  No new hardware support is added, and no new features that
you would want are in there.

The LTS kernels are for the crazy embedded people that don't change
their hardware systems, and have the insane huge number of out-of-tree
patches.  No one else should be using those kernels, they should always
be using newer ones, as there are always more issues fixed in newer
kernels than older ones.

So again, I hope no one running Gentoo, which is a rolling, constantly
updated distro, is using the old and crusty 4.4 kernel release.  To do
so is to defeat the purpose of relying on Gentoo in the first place...

thanks,

greg k-h