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  • Plans to upgrade the lts kernel to 5.10?

Hey there
Just wanted to know what when is Solus thinking of using the 5.10 lts kernel. 4.14 is really really old right now.

The fact that 4.14 is old is not really a big deal. It will continue to get updates until at least January 2024. As for when Solus will move to a newer LTS branch I have no idea and Solus does not give ETAs.

There is also no guarantee that when Solus does switch LTS branches, that it will be to 5.10 there are also 4.19, 5.4 and 5.14 LTS branches available for Solus to pick from. Solus only moved the LTS kernel from 4.9 to the 4.14 branch on 26 July 2020 which means they had decided at that time not to move to 4.19 or 5.4

No, 5.10 is far too new for the sort of hardware that needs an LTS kernel. 4.19 caused breakages for a variety of AMD GPUs. The only other option really is 5.4, but we have no idea what the impact of that big of a jump would be for the hardware currently on LTS.

As @Harvey mentioned, 4.14 is supported until 2024, so there really isn't a rush for us to make that sort of decision. Not saying we want to kick the can down the curb that long, just that we can. Frankly with all the silicon shortages, supply constraints on various hardware, financial impacts of the pandemic, etc. some may just not be in the position to upgrade their hardware even if they wanted to. So why suddenly introduce the potential for breakages for those systems that otherwise work today?

i read somewhere online (linux.org maybe) that kernel 5.15 would be /was a LTS kernel. if this is so, then when Solus makes linux-current kernel move to 5.15 then we would be using the latest LTS kernel anyway .. i also see that the developing team is asking for people to test 5.15 kernel .

Right, but they are talking about our linux-lts, not our linux-current package.

In case anyone is confused, when a new Linux kernel branch is created and it is decided that it will be a LTS branch (Upstream decides this, Solus does not make this decision). It will at some point be the linux-current (latest stable kernel) package on Solus, the fact that it is a LTS branch is irrelevant it is still the latest stable at some point in time. However that does not mean it will ever be a kernel Solus supports via its linux-lts package.

There are currently 8 LTS kernel branches still getting updates. Solus only ever has 2 kernel choices a -current and a -lts branch. Still confused? Cool, I will make it worse; Despite 5.15.1 being available and technically the latest stable and LTS branch. 5.14.x is still getting updates but it is NOT an LTS kernel. It will become EOL (End Of Life) soonâ„¢. After a new branch is created and reaches stable status the latest older stable, non LTS branch becomes EOL usually around the x.x.18 release, but no hard release number or time frame is mandated (upstream), it is supported until it is not.