[elrepo] Will there be an update to 5.10.x?

[Phil Perry]

There are two train of thoughts on this.

Firstly is that any LTS offering should be just that - long term, and 
for Enterprise Linux that generally means as long as possible. Anyone 
developing against that kernel wants that long term support, not 
something that is chopping and changing every few years to some other 
LTS offering with a completely incompatible ABI. Here kernel-lt actually 
offers something the distro kernel does not as the ABI is a lot more 
consistent in kernel-lt than it will be in the distro kernel over the 
lifespan of the product.

The second train of thought is that 5.4.x is going to be horribly 
outdated - probably already is horribly outdated - and a switch to a 
newer LTS offering would hence make sense, as long as you don't 
subscribe to the first train of thought.

One could argue that anyone wanting a newer offering may be better off 
switching back to the distro kernel at some point in time, as with 
active backporting, many parts of the distro kernel(s) are now 
considerably 'newer' than that in 5.4.x, so it may be that the very 
reason you started using kernel-lt in the first place has since been 
negated. Or if you absolutely must have something newer then there is 
kernel-ml

Unfortunately we simply do not have the resources to be able to commit 
to offering both, and this being Enterprise Linux we settled on the 
first train of thought. Had it been fedora or Ubuntu we may well have 
taken the second approach, but it's not. The practicalities of this 
generally mean that there will likely be 2 versions of kernel-lt for any 
major release of RHEL so long as upstream retain their current ~5-6 year 
LTS support regime.

Hope that helps explain a little of the thinking behind the strategy.

Phil

On 30/05/2022 17:59, Starburst Hosting SysOp's via elrepo wrote:
> Was just curious, since kernel-lt went from 4.19.x to 5.4.x before that EOL.
> 
> 
> On 05/30/2022 12:32, Phil Perry wrote:
>> On 30/05/2022 17:03, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
>>> On 5/30/22 18:22, Starburst Hosting SysOp's via elrepo wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Was wondering if there would be an update to the kernel-lt to 5.10.x?
>>>>
>>>> 5.10.x has an EOL of December 2026.
>>>>
>>> Yes, there will. I assume that the procedure outlined in 
>>> http://lists.elrepo.org/pipermail/elrepo/2013-August/001863.html will 
>>> be followed again.
>>>
>>>
>>> wolfy
>>>
>>
>> Yes, as Wolfy says, once the current kernel-lt (currently 5.4.x) 
>> reaches end of life (projected Dec 2025), we will need to go through a 
>> process of selecting a new best suitable candidate to replace it. 
>> However, I would venture that by Dec 2025, there will be better 
>> candidates than 5.10.x which would only offer an additional 1 year of 
>> support at that time.
>>
>> Anyway, the later half of 2025 will be the time to have that discussion.
>>
>> Phil