On 04/09/2018 09:14 AM, Simon Lees wrote:
On 09/04/18 10:20, George from the tribe wrote:
Ok, I am confused. The last thread talked about the kernel being used in Leap 15 that is coming out, as being kernel 4.12. Then this website that was linked on the thread:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/linux-kernel-4-12-reached-end-of-life-users-a...
talks about how kernel 4.12 has reached end of life and everyone should move to 4.13.
So I looked on my desktop running 42.3 with all the latest updates, and this is my kernel:
uname -r 4.4.120-45-default
Then I looked on my laptop running 42.3 with all the latest updates as of a week ago, which uses the kernel:stable repository, and this is the kernel it is using:
uname -r 4.15.15-1.g4904fc3-default
So if 4.12 has reached end of life, then 4.4 (which is what is available in the distribution repos for 42.3) must be really old. But 4.15, which is available from the kernel:stable repository, is far out in the future and not yet being really developed.
My conclusions there must be wrong, but why? Is there something to the way they number the kernels that I am missing here? Does openSUSE have a different numbering scheme than the rest of the linux world?
openSUSE uses the same kernel numbering scheme as the rest of the world, but kernel naming schemes can be deceptive.
SUSE has its own team of kernel maintainers so while 4.12 is no longer maintained upstream openSUSE isn't running the upstream kernel its running the upstream kernel with a series of patches by SUSE kernel developers. Some of these maybe features but most are fixes or support for additional drivers taken from newer kernels. So while upstream has stopped supporting kernel 4.12 SUSE developers will continue to backport fixes and drivers into SUSE/openSUSE's version of the kernel.
You may for example have a new fancy device that wasn't originally supported in upstream kernel 4.12 but is supported in kernel 4.15, there is a reasonable chance that a SUSE engineer somewhere may have already ported support for that device into SUSE/openSUSE's version of kernel 4.12, so in this way and many others including security fixes just looking at the kernel number is wrong without also looking at which source "tree" the kernel has been built from.
Ok, that would explain why the original kernel in 42.2 didn't support the wireless card in my laptop but the kernel in the kernel:stable repo had the patch necessary to support it. Thanks, that makes sense now. -- George Box: 42.3 | KDE Plasma 5.8 | AMD Phenom IIX4 | 64 | 32GB Laptop #1: 42.3 | Gnome 3.20 | AMD FX 7TH GEN | 64 | 32GB Laptop #2: 42.3 | Gnome 3.20 | Core i5 | 64 | 8GB -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org