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Linux 4.10 Kernel Reaches End of Life (softpedia.com)

prisoninmate quotes Softpedia: As it's not an LTS (Long Term Support) branch, the Linux 4.10 kernel series was doomed to reach end of life sooner or later, and it happened this weekend with the release of the Linux kernel 4.10.17 patch, which is a major one changing a total of 103 files, with 981 insertions and 538 deletions. Therefore, users are now urged to move to the Linux 4.11 kernel series. If you're using a GNU/Linux distribution powered by a kernel from the Linux 4.10 series you need to update to version 4.10.17 as soon as it makes its way into the stable repositories. However, please inform your OS vendor that they need to upgrade the kernel packages to the Linux 4.11 series immediately.

58 comments

  1. Seriously? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    OS vendors knows well before Slashdot for sure, trust me.

  2. I don't need no steenkin kernel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    systemd has everything I need.

    1. Re:I don't need no steenkin kernel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      F systemd

  3. So nVidia? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is the binaries ready?

  4. What is this kernel 4.10 ... ? by Alain+Williams · · Score: 4, Funny

    I am running 2.6.32 - on a CentOS 6 system. Not everyone is always chasing the latest. I shall upgrade when RedHat/CentOS 8 comes out, probably in a year or two.

    1. Re:What is this kernel 4.10 ... ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Might be wise to get yourself acquainted with how RH manages kernel. That number is just the version it was originally based off of. Since then it received numerous patches making it a franken-kernel including many things from newer kernels, mostly security and bug fixes, and mostly without new features with some notable exceptions (new features) listed with each CentOS point version release notes.

    2. Re:What is this kernel 4.10 ... ? by Alain+Williams · · Score: 1

      I am quite aware of that, thank you. The point that I am making is that I value the stability of RedHat/CentOS, the version that I am running does the job that I need it for. If I needed a new feature then I would upgrade the whole OS.

    3. Re:What is this kernel 4.10 ... ? by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Funny

      Ha. I'm still running an old Windows XP machine without even any service packs installed. I don't need your fancy 2.6.32 kernel.

      side note: Do you know of any way to decrypt files if I don't have the key?

    4. Re:What is this kernel 4.10 ... ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If I needed a new feature then I would upgrade the whole OS.

      and at least they aren't doing it for you and against your wishes......

      i love the rh stability and shelf life, too.. for me, that's the biggest selling point.

    5. Re:What is this kernel 4.10 ... ? by Hognoxious · · Score: 0

      Snap!. And even better, it has 0% systemd!

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    6. Re:What is this kernel 4.10 ... ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It can be decrypted, but you need to wait around 25 years when quantum computers becomes mainstream and can crack its RSA private keys. For the mean time, you can use the tool at GitHub released by a French researcher.

    7. Re: What is this kernel 4.10 ... ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Till he moves to centos8 in a few years. System is already part of centos/rhel7 and I don't see it going away.

    8. Re:What is this kernel 4.10 ... ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I did a port scan on my home network: router, printer, and chromecast are all running Linux 2.6. Damn!

    9. Re:What is this kernel 4.10 ... ? by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      It's Monday morning, what the hell are you doing not on 4.12-rc2 yet? Got some state open that prevents you from rebooting?

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    10. Re:What is this kernel 4.10 ... ? by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      2.4.18-rmk3 here

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    11. Re:What is this kernel 4.10 ... ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just wait until the next TLA leak

    12. Re: What is this kernel 4.10 ... ? by ruir · · Score: 1

      Better move to *BSD

    13. Re:What is this kernel 4.10 ... ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, and make sure you don't reboot your computer until you get the files decrypted!

    14. Re:What is this kernel 4.10 ... ? by jwhyche · · Score: 2

      Same here. 2.6.32.xxx something. I think of upgrading it all the time but then I'm lazy and it does the job.

      --
      I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
  5. Wow by MrKaos · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As a long time Linux user, I just realized I don't know or care what Linux kernel I am using.

    --
    My ism, it's full of beliefs.
    1. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agree. I am glad about it.
      I really do not miss the nights compiling kernel.

    2. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So has the problem with getting the latest video drivers been fixed? I remember having to find the proper kernel headers (down to ver.a.b-c-ubuntu) when updating to latest nVidia OpenGL driver EVERY FUCKING TIME.

    3. Re:Wow by ausekilis · · Score: 1

      I just checked my CentOS 7... still rocking 3.10. Just got the 375.66 nVidia drivers too. No idea how old any of it is, but the system is stable.

    4. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So has the problem with getting the latest video drivers been fixed? I remember having to find the proper kernel headers (down to ver.a.b-c-ubuntu) when updating to latest nVidia OpenGL driver EVERY FUCKING TIME.

      That's exactly because you kept insisting on installing the specific kernel number instead of using the "linux-headers-generic" meta package.

      Most people including me don't care though as they aren't doing anything 3d intensive and aren't using nvidia/ati proprietary drivers.

    5. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most people who do graphics intensive tasks switch to Windows.

    6. Re:Wow by bigdady92 · · Score: 2

      I had to check our AWS systems as I was curious

      All our systems are on 4.9 which is a bit more than CentOS 7 but not fully into RH8 land.

      I wonder how long it will be till AWS pushes out 4.11.

      --
      Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
    7. Re: Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NVIDIA raked in a ton of cash last quarter from enterprise Linux. Pay attention to the news and see the friggen huge stock price. Those of us that started betting on NVIDIA a year or two ago have made serious money because of Linux.

    8. Re: Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dude, wtf? :D

    9. Re:Wow by tobiasly · · Score: 1

      I had to check our AWS systems as I was curious

      All our systems are on 4.9 which is a bit more than CentOS 7 but not fully into RH8 land.

      I wonder how long it will be till AWS pushes out 4.11.

      You don't have anything to worry about; the summary is very misleading. TFA says: "Upgrade to Linux kernel 4.11 as soon as possible if you're using Linux 4.10".

      4.9 is an LTS release and will be supported until Jan 2019. Even if using a version not supported directly by the kernel maintainers, many distros backport and test security fixes to their currently-supported releases for many years.

    10. Re:Wow by ruir · · Score: 1

      I totally agree with you it 4.9 is an LTS...It is just the quasi-sensaonalist way the original post is written here in Slashdot "Change to 4.11 or die a slow dead".

    11. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Christ, even the latest Fedora doesn't sport a 4.11 kernel. 4.10.15 here.

    12. Re:Wow by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      As a long time Windows user I'm glad to find someone in the Linux community who takes security as seriously as my grandmother. I mean I know the Linux community is all for the "open" thing, but I didn't realise that meant open access to their computers.

    13. Re:Wow by maestroX · · Score: 1

      As a long time Linux user, I just realized I don't know or care what Linux kernel I am using.

      Same here, can't remember when I did make dep clean config (2.6ish?) or dmesg.

    14. Re:Wow by antdude · · Score: 1

      Ditto. I am using Debian stable's Kernel v3.16.43-2 (2017-04-30) x86_64. I couldn't get v4 to work with my EVGA GeForce GT 8800 NVIDIA video card (512 MB of VRAM) for some reason so I just kept using the older version. It works fine.

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    15. Re:Wow by MrKaos · · Score: 1

      As a long time Windows user I'm glad to find someone in the Linux community who takes security as seriously as my grandmother. I mean I know the Linux community is all for the "open" thing, but I didn't realise that meant open access to their computers.

      I worked with your grandmother in doing an ISO27000 implementation for a large bank. She was really good at uncovering exploits and writing firewall rules. Your grandmother is a l33t computor h@x0r, you should really show her more respect*. If she is helping you with the security on your windows machine you are in good hands. ;)

      * This post in no way construes a dissing of your grandmother

      --
      My ism, it's full of beliefs.
  6. OS vendor? On Linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You and I don't have the same definition of "vendor". That would be assuming anyone makes money off freely available Linux distro.

  7. Re:Ma83 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Tremendously poor attempt. Shockingly poor.

  8. My Technicolor 4600 STB from TWC is using by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Linux 1.2.5604.1 for MIPS. And it's one of three. About $35/month for them. Each and every month. Each and every year. FREEDOM? What freedom?

  9. Slow news day? Friday already ;-? by ReneR · · Score: 1

    Heck, and I was just review booting a Lenovo T470s w/ 4.10.x the other day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  10. Now I feel old... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When did 2.6 end, again?

    1. Re: Now I feel old... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It only ended once.

  11. Breaking News: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    consistent with habits years before the announcement of a cpmpeting product, operating system developers used their competitor's encironment to write a competing product! Mr.Spliy Anus Torballs lnown as the inseminator of VLinuz has chosen a release cycle and versioning system similar to Wangblows N1ggernet Exploder owner Mixrosloth. Similarlt before VMLinuz, the whore developer of Plan9 and ANSI Sheee Programming Languages known as Denise 'bitch-itch" Richie has opted to develop on Windows NT.

    Faggalicious

  12. Debian by ruir · · Score: 1

    Still 4.9.0 here. I am dead worried reading this...Should I email the Debian team? :-P

    1. Re:Debian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Don't, we will ignore you with good reason. 4.11 is (currently) broken crap, and so is 4.10 for that matter. Laptop LID handling was destroyed in 4.11, it will break professional laptops like thinkpads and non-joke Dells. There are still several nasty issues introduced in the 4.10 and 4.11 timeframe that are being looked at or waiting in the stable-queue for a fix.

      BTW, 4.8 and later (which does include Debian's 4.9) is suspected to not be just quite right for 32-bit x86 (broken __get_user_u64() depending on sheer compiler luck to not misbehave -- one has to check the generated code to know if it caused damage or not, as it depends on how gcc decided to do register allocation when inlining that particular instance of a __get_user_u64() call), but Linus landed a fix today and asked for testing.

    2. Re:Debian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "break" as in "won't work right", it doesn't damage the hardware.

    3. Re:Debian by ruir · · Score: 1

      I was being sarcastic.

    4. Re:Debian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Linux 3.8 did break my cup holder and set fire to my ash tray.

    5. Re:Debian by zwarte+piet · · Score: 1

      I'll stick to 4.4 for now. Haven't rebooted since January.

  13. Emacs. by DrYak · · Score: 1

    systemd has everything I need.

    A yeah, I think I've heard about that one.
    It's a module that runs inside emacs, isn't it ?
    (Though not as popular as the kernel module inside emacs that FSF decided to use instead of Hurd).

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  14. LTS alternative by DrYak · · Score: 1

    Might be wise to get yourself acquainted with how RH manages kernel. {...} Since then it received numerous patches {...} mostly security and bug fixes

    So, a sort of LTS kernel (though the concept wasn't as formally organised back in the 2.6.xx era.

    Which brings us to another solution which wasn't mentioned in the summary :
    If you don't want to move *forward* to kernel 4.11 (I don't know maybe there's a regression or a dropped support that affects you),
    you can move *backward* to kernel 4.9 which is a LTS version and is going to be supported for quite a few years.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  15. Video drivers by DrYak · · Score: 2

    So has the problem with getting the latest video drivers been fixed?

    Depends on the graphic card.

    TL;DR: For Intel and AMD, you really don't give a fuck what you're running.
    (Or if you're into gaming, you *absolutely* try to run the latest possible kernel and Mesa combo to get all the latest belss and whistles).

    e.g.:
    - Intel is exclusively doing opensource drivers (at least for their own cores. For the core that they sub licensed from PowerVR several years back, it's an entirely different story).
    The drivers are part of the upstream kernel, so getting a new kernel *IS* how you get a new driver.

    - AMD has embraced opensource (beginning almost as far back as when they bought ATI - though the actual implementation has taken much time).
    They have a dual offering.

    For a few special user (CAD software users, etc. who require opengl profiles) they still provide a closed source driver called AMDGPU-PRO. (As of note, it also shares some code with the current Windows drivers).
    For the rest, the opensource source drivers (based around Mesa) are their main target. They have been investing resources (some of the devs of the opensource Mesa drivers are on AMD's payroll). Recently, it has seen tremendous improvement and starts to beat the closed source driver on most use-cases.

    Both above driverrs rely on the same opensource kernel module. So if you use the opensource driver, the situation is the same as Intel : getting the latest kernel *IS* how you get the latest kernel module.
    Only for the closed source AMDGPU-PRO does AMD spends ressource back-porting the kernel module to older kernel.
    (So if you are a CAD user, better stick to major distribution whose kernel are more likely to see such back-ports. Or move to a rolling release distro, but that would be unusual for this class of users).

    The current only exception is Vulkan. AMD haven't finished the necessary work to opensource their official Vulkan implementation. So AMDGPU-PRO is the only way to get it.
    Meanwhile, opensouce developers have created RADV, their own unofficial Vulkan implementation for AMD cards. Currently, this implementation finally passes the conformancy tests and implements the Vulkan API completely, but isn't optimized yet. So often games run better using their openGL back-end (given that massive effort mentionned above) than using their Vulkan back-end (because as mentioned here, it's a small project, which only recently achieved full conformancy and hasn't even started optimizing).

    regarding other API :
    AMD has recently opensource a new OpenCL implementation running on top of their ROCm computing platform.
    Now that this is opensourced, expect the optimizing to go faster, and eventually reaching the point that OpenGL has reached.

    Over all the days of the absolutely aweful fglrx closed-source ATI driver are distant past.

    I remember having to find the proper kernel headers (down to ver.a.b-c-ubuntu) when updating to latest nVidia OpenGL driver EVERY FUCKING TIME.

    Bad news for you : Nvidia is still doing closed source drivers.

    They basically recompile their Windows drivers for Linux, and write their own closed source "shim" kernel driver.
    Meaning that you're completely dependent on Nvidia condescending to port their code to your specific kernel.

    Also don't expect features that normally work with this hardware on Windows, and that other manufacturer have successfully implemented on Linux to work for you.
    (Again, remember : Nvidia is basically recompiling their windows drivers. Some features have an API under Linux, but it's largely different and Nvidia doesn't botter)
    (eg.: see who long it took them to properly implement xrandr for output handling)
    (eg.: remember the whole fiasco around dual embed+discrete GPU on laptop working badly. Culminating with the public "Fuck you, Nvidia !" by Linus about their lack of collaboration)
    (eg.: it's 2017 already, and Nvidia still hasn't got their sh

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:Video drivers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks. I would mod you up if I could.

    2. Re:Video drivers by MrKaos · · Score: 1

      That's some great info - thanks.

      --
      My ism, it's full of beliefs.