Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Likely To Ship With Linux 5.4 As Opposed To 5.5

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Likely To Ship With Linux 5.4 As Opposed To 5.5

While the Linux 5.5 is out as stable today and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS isn't shipping until late April, it looks like they are settling on the use of the Linux 5.4 series, rather than the newer 5.5 and Linux 5.6 would be cutting too close to release anyhow for making this long-term support release...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-20.04-Linux-5.4-Likely

[Danny3]

WTF... I was hoping that they will push 5.6 and now I hear that it doesn't come not even with 5.5 ?
This is ridiculous!
Bad times for everyone who bought a Ryzen or Navi and wants to have the best support, performance and sensors by default.
Also good luck of upgrading the kernel and then trying to install badly designed software like ROCm that works only on LTS Ubuntu releases and with their original kernel version refusing to install if you manually upgrade the kernel.
I know that Ubuntu always comes with outdated sofware and always try to find a way do less work, like the 32 bit removal, but this is pretty awful.

[Azrael5]

It's a bad news. Are the ubuntu developers deprecated?

[peterdk]

Any source for this news? Can't find it in the article.

[tjaalton]

RX5500XT (navi14) seems to work just fine with 5.4

there's also going to be an OEM kernel option on the installer, used on certified machines by default and opt-in for others, and will hopefully use 5.6 initially and then roll forward to be rebased to the HWE kernel from the next non-lts releases

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/technical-board/2020-January/002478.html

[L_A_G]

Are you people forgetting that we're talking about an LTS release here? Because last time I checked the purpose of LTS releases is to provide long term reliable support built on properly tried and tested components. Because of this it would have been odd had they not used 5.4 when that's the latest LTS kernel and mind you, I'm saying this as someone whose go-to Linux has been the latest Ubuntu LTS a newer mainline kernel.

Seriously, if you want releases with new releases of DMs, kernels, etc. you use the regular ones that make up 3/4 of Canonical's Ubuntu releases. If that's not enough you either pull the bleeding edge components you want on your own or use Arch. Linux is not a monolithic OS with only one distro like MacOS, there's different distros for different use cases.

[Veerappan]

We'll, if we want to look for an upside, this means that my old Nvidia 9400m laptop got a short extension how long the binary drivers will work.

Hopefully the nouveau driver will figure out how to sleep/wake again by the time I have to switch back over.

[Britoid]

Using LTS distros on new hardware or on non-enterprise desktop machine has never made sense. It probably doesn't help that Ubuntu recommends users install the LTS version, where they then experience bugs that have most likely been fixed and the whole Linux desktop gets a bad name.

Microsoft puts most users onto non-LTSC versions of Windows for a reason.

[bug77]

Ubuntu has been missing latest kernel since I care to remember (10+ years ago). It's just the way they do things.

[schmidtbag]

Are you people forgetting that we're talking about an LTS release here? Because last time I checked the purpose of LTS releases is to provide long term reliable support built on properly tried and tested components. Because of this it would have been odd had they not used 5.4 when that's the latest LTS kernel and mind you, I'm saying this as someone whose go-to Linux has been the latest Ubuntu LTS a newer mainline kernel.

Seriously, if you want releases with new releases of DMs, kernels, etc. you use the regular ones that make up 3/4 of Canonical's Ubuntu releases. If that's not enough you either pull the bleeding edge components you want on your own or use Arch. Linux is not a monolithic OS with only one distro like MacOS, there's different distros for different use cases.

Yes, we understand it is LTS, but are you forgetting that there isn't yet another Ubuntu version with newer packages? Although I don't have any AMD hardware in need of the 5.5 or 5.6 kernel, I do have an ARM laptop that is. For people like myself, a kernel with more hardware functionality is more desirable than a kernel of unknown stability.

Normally I'd agree with you about just switching to another distro, but in my case, Arch doesn't work properly on my laptop.