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Is it worth getting a LTS kernel?

I've heard LTS kernels offer more stability, but lack the latest features. How likely is my system to break with the standard kernel?

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  • If you want stability use the latest Debian. The point of those LTS kernels is more and more supporting IoT and other devices you can't simply upgrade, but you want to keep secure... regular use cases can just usa a stable disto like Debian and you'll never notice any kernel related issues.

  • Stability isn't the same as unbreakability. It just means the update cycle is prolonged.

    If you're worried about your system breaking, go for Fedora Atomic (Kinoite, Bazzite, uBlue, etc.).
    It offers a very recent kernel (-> better hardware support, better performance, etc.) and because it's an image based distro, you can always roll back, so you'll always have a working and pretty much unbreakable system.

  • Don't worry too much about it if it doesn't make sense to you. It can be really valuable if you're deploying a substantial amount of IoT devices on the edge with no to little possibility to do over the air upgrades reliably or when the cost of failure is high (i.e. a technician has to be on site to fix it). So, sometimes you just want it to be running as stable as possible for as long as possible without management.

  • I used to always go with Ubuntu LTS for dat stability. One day I had to upgrade to non-LTS version for some reason (that I completely forget) and I've never looked back. IME it's the same as LTS but with all the cool features you wish you had. Which I can't list rn because I forget.

    ...Who am I even. idk.

  • It depends on whether you like your OS to be boring or not. If you like it boring and the LTS kernel works for you, use it.

  • I have an LTS kernel as a backup in case something doesn't work with my main kernel.

    Just recently I had an issue where my main kernel had a bug where snap's can't start up, so I just restarted into the LTS kernel to use it then restarted back into my main kernel.

  • You can install multiple kernels along with their respective headers. As long as you create a hook that runs mkinitcpio and grub-mkconfig whenever you update the kernels, you can then choose which kernel you want to use when the grub menu comes up.

    This way you can always use whichever kernel you want, and is good practice should an update to one of the kernels have breaking changes.

20 评论