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On Sun, Aug 21, 2016 at 6:20 AM, Peter Humphrey <peter@××××××××××××.uk> wrote: |
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> On Sunday 21 Aug 2016 05:55:06 Rich Freeman wrote: |
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>> On Sun, Aug 21, 2016 at 5:12 AM, Peter Humphrey <peter@××××××××××××.uk> |
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> wrote: |
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>> > After this morning's sync, both versions 4.4.6 and 4.6.4 of |
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>> > gentoo-sources have disappeared. Is this just finger trouble in the |
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>> > server chain? I get the same with UK and US sync servers. |
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>> |
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>> No idea, but upstream is up to 4.4.19, and 4.6.7 (which is now EOL). |
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>> So, those are pretty old versions. I see 4.4.19 in the Gentoo repo, |
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>> and 4.7.2 (which is probably where 4.6 users should be moving to). |
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> |
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> Yes, this ~amd64 box is now at 4.7.2, but I have an amd64 and two x86 |
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> systems and they both want to downgrade to 4.1.15-r1, which eix shows as the |
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> latest stable version. |
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> |
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> I thought 4.4.6 and 4.6.4 were both pretty stable; was I wrong? |
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> |
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I'm sure they both work. However, upstream has released numerous |
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fixes since 4.4.6, and they will not be releasing security/bug/etc |
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fixes for 4.6.x. |
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|
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As long as there are no critical issues there is no issue with not |
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being completely up-to-date with the kernel's stable releases, and I'm |
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sure the Gentoo kernel team is tracking these sorts of issues. |
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However, it isn't a surprise that they dropped 4.6. If they |
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downgraded 4.1 I suspect that was a mistake somewhere along the ways - |
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I could see them upgrading it to something more recent. |
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|
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And there is nothing wrong with having some internal QA on kernel |
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releases. 4.1 had a nasty memory leak a release or two ago that was |
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killing my system after only an hour or two uptime. They took over a |
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week to stabilize the fix as well (though a patch was out fairly |
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quickly). So, I'm not in nearly the rush to update kernels as I used |
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to be (granted, unless you read all the lists it is easy to miss this |
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sort of thing). I really wish the kernel had separate |
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announce/discussion/patch lists. It is really annoying that there is |
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no way to get official notices up upstream updates without subscribing |
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to lkml and such. Is Linux the only FOSS project that has never heard |
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of -announce lists? |
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|
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I ended up bailing on gentoo-sources all the same. Not that there was |
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really anything wrong with it, but since I'm running btrfs and they've |
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had a history of nasty regressions that tend to show up MONTHS later |
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I've been a lot more picky about my kernel updates. I'm currently |
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tracking 4.1. I might think about moving to 4.4 in a little while. I |
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tend to stay on the next-to-most-recent longterm not long after a new |
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longterm is announced. That tends to give them enough time to work |
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out the bugs. Plus, I spend a lot less time playing with |
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configuration options this way (they don't change within a minor |
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version). |
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|
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-- |
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Rich |
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