Re: Choose 5.10 LTS or 5.15 LTS

From: Willy Tarreau
Date: Sun Aug 07 2022 - 23:36:48 EST


On Mon, Aug 08, 2022 at 10:35:19AM +0800, brookxu.cn@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> We want to choose an LTS kernel version to use for a few years. As we know,
> the 5.10 LTS has a 6 years maintenance period with the help of huawei. But
> the 5.15 LTS currently only has a two-year maintenance period, and it may
> reach EOL next year. It is currently unclear whether it will be extended.

It all depends on what level of effort you're willing to make:

- if you really want to just use and not participate at all (i.e. report
issues, test pre-releases etc), 5.10 will be more suited.

- if you're willing to participate, you can start to encourage others to
do so as well in order to convince Greg that he will not be alone in
this tedious task and that it's worth extending 5.15.

- or if you're willing to invest a little bit of time but don't want to
engage too far, you could also take the risk of going for 5.15, hoping
that it will be extended, knowing that if it's not, it will be your
job to deal with backports (which usually is a real pain and would
justify giving back some help on official support instead).

> Coupled with the arrival of the 6.0 kernel, I am a little worried that the
> maintenance of 5.15 will be reduced. Does anyone have good suggestions,
> thank you.

That's just numbering, and should in no way affect maintenance of existing
code.

Hoping this helps,
Willy