Funtoo Linux BDFL drobbins Posted November 10, 2018 Funtoo Linux BDFL Report Share Posted November 10, 2018 Hey all, We are about to switch Release 1.2 to use debian-sources-lts as the default kernel. What this means is that on stage3's, you will soon be greeted with debian-sources-lts pre-built instead of the regular debian-sources. This may be surprising to you because you will notice that on new installs, you won't have a 4.14+ kernel but an earlier one. But there is a good reason for this, as I'll explain. Many of you know that "debian-sources-lts" is Debian's "long term stable" kernel, and is based on the 4.9 series. I know, I know... some of you might not like this choice, particularly if you are used to running a more recent kernel. I'll remind those who are in this camp that as always, Funtoo supports running whatever kernel you like -- we're simply changing our default. From our perspective, the benefits of this change are numerous. First, Debian's "LTS" kernel is considered to be production-ready for servers and is kept up-to-date with the latest Spectre and Meltdown mitigations. This by itself is a good reason for us to switch. Other nice things are that because it is a 'stable' kernel, we can expect good driver compatibility with things like nivida-drivers, so it should reduce breakage experienced by third-party modules. It's also the kernel we use ourselves for production servers, so we simply pay more attention to it overall than the regular debian-sources. It's always best if the kernel we ship to you is the one we use ourselves, as it gets the most testing and validation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts