Kernel releases

[Christopher.Carlson at zodiacaerospace.com]

Thank you for your response.  I appreciate the time you took to explain it 
to me.


Sincerely,
Chris Carlson










From:   John Johansen <john.johansen at canonical.com>
To:     Christopher.Carlson at zodiacaerospace.com, Paul Smith 
<paul at mad-scientist.net>
Cc:     ubuntu-devel-discuss at lists.ubuntu.com
Date:   07/30/2015 12:45 PM
Subject:        Re: Kernel releases



On 07/30/2015 11:49 AM, Christopher.Carlson at zodiacaerospace.com wrote:
> Thank you for your reply, Paul.
> 
> BTW, I'm running 14.04.2 LTS.x86_64.
> 
> I also don't always restart, but I presume the only reason we got a 
kernel update is because of a bug or security, which encourages me to 
restart.  It nags at me (not the system, but my concern that there's a 
problem lurking).
> 
> My whining is brought on by my strong dislike of Microsoft, and I get 
irritated that I have to reboot my Windows 7 machine every week.  To think 
that Ubuntu is following in their footsteps concerns me.
> 
> Yes, I could scan the release notes to see if I really need this update, 
and thanks for the link.  I've only got 57 of them on my system. Ugh.  I 
have to clean up my /boot directory every couple of months or so to keep 
it reasonable.
> 
Yes there have been a lot of updates lately due to several kernel 
vulnerabilities that have been discovered.

The kernel has a regular update Cadence of every 3 weeks in which Ubuntu 
pulls in regular fixes from upstream stable releases. This will mostly 
contain bug fixes but there are usually a few security fixes as well. 
These kernels under go QA testing and are available in the proposed pocket 
for broader testing if someone is interested. The bug fixes are varied and 
maybe for bugs reported in launchpad but are often just upstream stable 
bug fixes that have been discovered and fixed as part of on going kernel 
development. Often the fixes are in drivers for specific hardware and you 
will never experience the issue if you're machine doesn't have that 
hardware. If a security fix can wait for the regular kernel update cadence 
it is usually a lower priority bug like a local denial of service issue. 
The important thing to remember about these kernels is that if you are not 
experiencing issues you generally don't need to install them, or can 
install them and just not reboot.

In addition to the regular kernel update Cadence there are "emergency" 
kernels that fix higher priority kernel issues as they come up. Ubuntu has 
no control over when these bugs are discovered or disclosed, so the only 
thing it can do is publish a patched kernel when an issue arises. Whether 
an individual will need to update for these emergency kernels depends on 
how they are using their machine. A single user system may not need to 
update for a local privilege escalation, where a vps hosting provider 
should. What Ubuntu doesn't do is batch important security fixes into a 
"patch Tuesday" type of update to reduce the number of updates.


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