Re:Greg Kroah-Hartman Stretches Support Periods for Key Linu...
by i_think_so on Friday March 06, 2026 @06:53AM
(#47273856)
> It could be, but are vendors actually upgrading kernels along with firmware updates?
Certainly the big guys like IBM/RedHat are putting effort into maintaining their legacy trees.
> In my experience it's more like, ship 5+ year old kernel and then forget it forever.
I think that's the case with smaller vendors, like the teams that produce a custom kernel for the newest ARM single board kit. Once most of their inventory is sold they have little incentive to dedicate engineering bandwidth to updates. (And there's always the community effort to pick up the slack.)
Certainly the big guys like IBM/RedHat are putting effort into maintaining their legacy trees.
> In my experience it's more like, ship 5+ year old kernel and then forget it forever.
I think that's the case with smaller vendors, like the teams that produce a custom kernel for the newest ARM single board kit. Once most of their inventory is sold they have little incentive to dedicate engineering bandwidth to updates. (And there's always the community effort to pick up the slack.)