Kernel Release planned to be used for 24.04 Noble

Tue Jan 30 12:10:32 UTC 2024

Hi,

On Tue, 30 Jan 2024 at 11:59, Thomas Lamprecht <t.lamprecht at proxmox.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Andrea,
>
> Am 30/01/2024 um 12:04 schrieb Andrea Righi:
> > We are planning to go with a v6.8 kernel, here is the official
> > announcement:
> > https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/introducing-kernel-6-8-for-the-24-04-noble-numbat-release
>
> Oh, I overlooked that – thanks for the pointers!
>
> > Keep in mind that 6.8 is still in the early stages, so something may be
> > missing or broken.
> Sure, but if I might ask, what is the rational one the kernel selection?
> As in the past it seemed that for Ubuntu LTS releases a LTS kernel was
> favored, besides for 18.04 due to the bad timing of the meltdown &
> spectre advisory releases.
>
> Is it because the kernel.org LTS releases will have a shorter time until
> EOL nowadays, i.e., 3 vs. 6 years, making it less relevant to base upon
> them compared to the feature and HW support gains one gets from the newer
> kernel that get releases more closely to when Ubuntu plans to release?
>

Ubuntu Kernel selection for every interim and LTS release is based on
our schedule and needs in consultation with our partners and
alliances.

There are too many features and hardware support that we need from
v6.7 and v6.8 kernels, making v6.6 not a great fit for our purposes.

For example, even Jammy desktop GA iso shipped with v5.17 OEM kernel
because v5.15 was impossible to work with on certified hardware at the
time. And most (cloud & desktop-laptop hardware) of jammy
installations have now rolled to v6.5 kernel and will roll to v6.8
once noble ships.

Ubuntu provides LTS (long term support) and ESM (extended security
maintaince) by ourselves, irrespective of kernel.org support timelines
of their kernels. Even today we support v3.3 kernel on trusty, through
to 6.5 kernel on mantic. This is not unique to Ubuntu Kernel, but to
all packages shipped in Ubuntu. Although our support commitments are
explained on https://ubuntu.com/pro and
https://ubuntu.com/security/esm we have to continuously reiterate our
position and our support offer see for example these blog posts
https://ubuntu.com/blog/linux-kernel-lts and
https://ubuntu.com/blog/running-openssl-1-1-1-after-eol-with-ubuntu-pro

Irrespective of which kernels we ship, we will support them for at
least 10 years.

-- 
Dimitri

Sent from Ubuntu Pro
https://ubuntu.com/pro