Recently we have had a number of issues with hardware regressions on the LTS kernels, rendering systems with newer hardware unbootable. This has me wondering if it might be time to move LTS to a newer version. The 4.9 series has been good to us, but it has also been the LTS release on Solus for 3 years now. We had some issues on 4.14 with Intel systems, but those were largely fixed in the meantime. 4.19 is the first kernel after the AMD DC/DAL patches landed for newer GPUs, causing some breakage for older Radeon cards. 5.4 was fraught with many issues in the early releases, but has had a lot of time to mature since then, with fixes getting back-ported from newer kernels.

From my perspective, there are 3 main routes forward:

  1. Remain on 4.9 and hope that things don't regress further.
  2. Move to the 4.14 kernel and see how that works out in testing, as a small step forward.
  3. Move to the 5.4 kernel with the knowledge that anyone on LTS can get a rough idea of compatibility by testing linux-current and provide this feedback to help inform the decision.

I'd rather not stick with 4.9 as it is becoming a problem for supporting newer hardware (last 3-5 years) since it predates most of the major hardware shifts in the kernel (Vega/Navi, Zen, Newer Intel). I think 4.14 feels like a half-measure, but might at least buy us time on older systems that might not work well on newer kernels. At the same time, 5.4 is closest to the linux-current kernel which makes testing without updating the LTS kernel yet a bit easier. I also have no interest in adding the third kernel into the mix as having to already creates a lot of extra work.

At this point, I have not made a final decision on what to do. But I am attaching a poll to this post to get a better idea where people stand today and to understand the reasoning behind choosing the LTS kernels over linux-current. If you don't mind taking the time to explain your own reasoning, in addition to responding to the poll, I would greatly appreciate this feedback. Thank you!

Why do you install the LTS kernel?

    DataDrake stickied the discussion .

    I have an older Dell Inspirion and I have run Solus on it with no problems (or reinstalls) since March of 2019. It uses the linux-current kernel with absolutely no issues at all.

    I have an HP Laptop (with an Intel processor) that I used to have as my main rig. However sometime last December or January the wireless capabilities just.. stopped. The Ethernet port doesn't work and so I lost all internet connection completely. I formatted the harddrive and installed Manjaro on my HP and the wireless adapter worked for a few days and then it stopped working again.

    I wasn't able to use it for about three months until I figured out there was an common issue with the kernel and ethernet between 5.4 and 5.6. As of last night, my HP laptop STILL won't work unless I am running 4.19 on Manjaro. I reinstalled Solus last night to see if anything changed and had issues connecting to WiFi on linux-current until I switched to the linux-lts kernel. Once I did everything worked fine again.

    I am certain that the issue is kernel based and has nothing to do with the distrobution. However if you use any kernel above 4.19 I fear that I won't be able to use my wireless adapter to connect to the internet and I'll be in the same boat I was before.

    I am cool with whatever choice you make on this matter (as long as my Dell laptop can still connect to the internet using Solus) but I thought the issues I had with my wireless adapter and the LTS Kernel would be relevant to this conversation. Not everyone has the ability to switch out laptops if something unexpected happens and I'd hate to see this issue adversely affect Solus users who might not have an easy way to fix it.

      i installed the lts back in the day as backup. kept it out of habit, even though im pretty sure it wont work with my 5700 XT, never had trouble with the current. maybe we should have the most recent lts AND and oldish lts as well

        davidjharder Yeah, I realized that after the first couple of votes and don't want to risk resetting the counters by adding a new options.

          jrsilvey I still can't boot up with the current kernel, I will inevitably get stuck on the black screen with the white cursor. I've been using LTS because it's the only thing that just boots me up with no issue. It's a fairly recent Custom Built (Clevo barebones) Laptop, too.

          I've wasted many mornings trying to figure out what's keeping me from booting up on current, but I can never quite figure out what it is.

          I'm afraid if LTS gets removed I'll have no way to use my laptop, and I'll lose quite a bit of stuff that I have set up here for work.

          I'll admit I'm not the most savy when it comes to Linux in depth stuff, but I also feel like I shouldn't be just to be able to use Solus with no issues.

          I had to rollback updates because I couldn't boot up anymore when this last update hit. It's kind of an elephant in the room that I'll have to address eventually, but I'm dreading it already

              GueGuerreiro I'm afraid if LTS gets removed I'll have no way to use my laptop, and I'll lose quite a bit of stuff that I have set up here for work.

              I'm not talking about removing LTS, just upgrading it to a newer version. If you wouldn't mind creating a separate post about your problems booting linux-current, let's see what we can figure out.

                  If I remember correctly linux-current was fairly buggy when it was first released, and it took many point releases before they finally stopped having some regressions (one or two of those regressions were also nvidia driver related). Luckily with all the updates, I've been running linux-current without any issues for months now, but generally speaking for my Acer Aspire E5-576G laptop with hybrid graphics, I tend to experience at least one or two breakages/regressions from the kernel each year, so I have the LTS kernel as a backup that I used for about a month because the regressions don't always get fixed right away. I'm a patient person so I don't mind the wait, however, since the last couple of updates, the 4.9 kernel no longer lets me boot into a GUI, so my backup is no longer a working backup. Now I'm not too concerned at the moment since linux-current has become a very solid kernel now, but I do always have some concern when a new kernel is released that's a new major version. Having said all that, I'd be willing to test and see if the 4.14 LTS kernel is a worthy successor, but it definitely isn't an easy decision because no matter the kernel, some users will encounter problems, we just have to do our best to find and use the kernel that causes the least amount of problems for the community. I for one am glad we are having this open discussion and am hopeful we'll figure something out together.

                  Hello I have an 8 year old notebook Asus and Thoshiba and no problems I think we should take the new LTS kernel and sorry for my English

                  I wanted a backup for when linux-current breaks and also I installed Solus when it was still the default kernel and have switched to the linux-current. I have 3 Solus installations.

                  I selected Other because ever since I installed Solus two and a half weeks ago (as far as I can tell) it has been booting the LTS kernel by default. I'm using a 2011 Macbook Pro, so perhaps it's something to do with old hardware? Or maybe I inadvertently did something to make this happen?

                  I'm brand new to Linux so my cluelessness is probably on full display here. I haven't tried switching to the current kernel so far as everything has been running really well, but I could give it a try just to see if it works.

                    RipperRoo If you installed broadcom-sta first, that would have installed the linux-lts kernel by accident.

                        DataDrake Ah, that explains it! I hadn’t dared to switch to the current kernel for fear of messing something up, but now that I know the LTS wasn’t the default one to begin with I’ll give switching a go. Thanks for clearing that up 🙂

                          davidjharder My vote for 'other' is a false positive, too. I'm perusing results. I don't have LTS installed but considering it as insurance because sometimes I do wreck the system.

                            i'm on the current, don't have LTS installed
                            no virtualbox but gnome-boxes