On Tue 23 Jul 2024 at 09:44:02 (+0000), Michael Kjörling wrote: > On 22 Jul 2024 21:20 -0500, from deb...@lionunicorn.co.uk (David Wright): > > The machine I'm typing on is running bullseye and was installed with > > linux-image-5.10.0-13-amd64. It's running linux-image-5.10.0-31-amd64 > > now, so that's 22 different versions over 27 months, and a lot of work > > put in by the Debian Kernel Team, thanks. I think Kroah-Hartman's > > praise still applies. > > It is a lot of work. > > Note that the -13- and -31- respectively refers to the ABI version of > the build, which isn't necessarily the same thing as an updated > kernel. It's not that uncommon for kernel updates to not increase the > ABI version tag, so in practice your system has probably seen many > more than 22 kernels over that period of time. (Without having > checked, I wouldn't be surprised if the real number of kernel updates > is on the order of 2-3 times the number of ABI bumps.)
Yes, I was only counting the versions that *stable users access, as package upgrades. The corresponding number of versions, when you count featuresets and flavours etc, that the developer/maintainer probably sees, is far higher but not easily determined by us from APT's lists. But my point was just that I'm not running a kernel that dates from either August 2021 (bullseye release) or April 2022 (this installation), which was implied by "Years between releases means software will get stale and accumulate bugs that will lead to vulnerable and exploitable hosts on the network." Cheers, David.
