Kernel 5.10 approved

Discussion
1

I saw last month that kernel 5.10 was approved. I wonder what kernel I was on with Linux Mint. I was some what surprised to see it at level 5.4. Still curious I check to see were my test installs of other Linux Distro was. MX (Debian) was at 5.8 and Manjaro (Arch) was at 5.9.

So after some reading, I found out that Debian has 3 levels. Stable, Testing, and unstable.
I found out that Manjaro (Arch Linux) is a rolling release.
I am assuming that with each kernel update that all the associated software is also updated. If that is correct:

  1. Manjaro at kernel 5.9 is very up to date with software. ------------------------> Rolling
  2. MX is stable and not too far behind at 5.8. ---------------------------------------> Stable
  3. Linux Mint at kernel 5.4 must be super stable and have very old software. —> LTS

So it seems to me that the major difference in Linux is the way the Distro is updated. What Distro you select is just the curtain dressing on a window to Linux.

The 3 differnt types of Linux are rolling, stable, and LTS. Again with rolling being most up-to-date, stable being only a little out of date, and LTS having the oldest yet most stable of all.

Comments welcome. I still learning. I could be all wrong on this break down.

2

Sometimes, if you use a bleeding edge release, you might find some packages missing, as they are not available yet for the newest version. Usually this means, that they also cannot use old packages, because this would most likely break compatability.

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I use a flavor of OpenSusE called Tumbleweed which brags that it has only the latest and I noticed it is a week behind the bleeding edge. I love it as ALL the “problems” I had I was able to fix easily. I just love it. By the way, Tumbleweed is on Kernel 5.10.5.

When I was using OpenSuSE Leap 15.1, I would compile the Kernel as soon as I heard it was out just because I wanted to see what it was like to compile the Kernel.

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4

Just compiled Gentoo with kernel 5.10.52.

5

I’m using Linux Mint with 5.4 Kernel, but the latest releases of Elementary OS 6 Odin and Zorin OS, both based on Ubuntu 20.04 are using 5.11 Kernels. In this new Kernel though both Elementary 6 and Zorin show the name of your Motherboard on the splash loading screen, with the icon of the OS or name underneath. If you’re a gamer and install the latest 470 NVIDIA drivers you’ll get just the name of your Motherboard up as splash screen.