On 2024-04-16, Dr Rainer Woitok <rainer.woi...@gmail.com> wrote: > Arve, > > On Tuesday, 2024-04-16 15:53:48 +0200, you wrote: > >> ... >> Only LTS kernels get stabilised, so this information is readily available. > > I'm sure I don't understand this: According to "https://www.kernel.org/" > kernel 6.6.27 is "longterm", but according to "eix" the most recent > 6.6.* kernels are 6.6.22 and 6.6.23 which both are non-stable (well, I > ran my last "sync" immediately before the profile upgrade, so this might > not be current). I'm still using stable kernel 6.6.13 as my backup ker- > nel, but this kernel is no longer provided by Gentoo. So, what precise- > ly does LTS or "longterm" mean?
That means that all gentoo-sources stable kernels are "longterm" kernel versions on kernel.org. It does not mean that all "longterm" kernel versions from kernel.org are available as "stable" in gentoo-sources. It is a statement that "gentoo-sources stable" is a subset of "kernel.org longterm". It is not a statement that the two sets are identical. In other words: "ONLY LTS kernels get stabilized." is a different statement from "ALL LTS kernels get stabilized." The former is true. The latter is not. > But, to get back to the beginning of this discussion: if there is a > risk that my aging hardware possibly can less and less cope with > newer and newer kernels, should I put something like > > >=sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-6.7.0 > > into file "package.mask" to stay with "longterm" 6.6.* kernels? Yes: if you want to avoid getting upgraded to 6.8 when it gets kernel.org "longterm" status and gentoo-sources "stable" status, then a statement like that in in package.mask will keep you on gentoo-sources 6.6 kernels (which are "longterm" on kernel.org). Again: not all longterm 6.6.x kernel versions get marked as "stable" for gentoo-sources. If you have not enabled the testing keyword for gentoo-sources, then you'll only get the 6.6.x kernel versions that the gentoo-sources maintainers have declared as "stable". -- Grant