Monday, August 5, 2013

Kernel-lt and the Future.

The ELRepo Project has regularly released a kernel-lt (long term supported)
package set for both enterprise Linux 5 & 6. These kernels have been based
on the linux-3.0.X stable branch.

The linux-3.0.X stable branch will be reaching end of life this coming
October [1][2] and a decision will have to be made with regards to the
future of the kernel-lt package sets that we provide.

There are a number of options available, the most radical being to stop
building and providing such kernel-lt package sets. However no decision
has yet been made.

A thread has been started on the ELRepo users' mailing list [3] where
subscribers have been asked to assist the Project's administrators in
making a decision.

If you would like to be part of the decision making process, please
contribute to that mailing list thread.

[1] https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html 
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel#Maintenance 
[3] http://lists.elrepo.org/pipermail/elrepo/2013-August/001863.html

1 comment:

  1. For those who are not on the ELRepo mailing list, here is the post by burakkucat that summarizes the discussion:

    Thank you, everybody, who have contributed to this discussion and have helped me to make the decision.

    I would also like to acknowledge the help of Phil Perry and Akemi Yagi in their testing the proposed new kernel-lt package set for Enterprise Linux 5.

    Until such time as the linux-3.0 stable source branch reaches end of life, we shall continue to release kernel-lt packages for both EL5 and EL6 based on that particular source tree. Subsequent to that EOL date, the kernel-lt package sets for EL5 will be based upon the linux-3.2 stable source branch whilst the kernel-lt package sets for EL6 will be based upon the linux-3.10 stable source branch.

    Anyone who wishes to experiment in advance please note that:

    * For EL5, the kernel-lt-3.2.50-0.rc2.el5.elrepo package set is still available from http://elrepo.org/people/ajb/devel/kernel-lt/el5/

    * For EL6, the current kernel-ml-3.10.5-1.el6.elrepo package set is representative of what will become the new kernel-lt package set.

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