Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Will Likely Ship With Linux 4.15

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Will Likely Ship With Linux 4.15

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, the recently named "Bionic Beaver", will most likely be shipping with a Linux 4.15-based kernel...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-18.04-LTS-Linux-4.15

[andrebrait]

They need to start shipping newer firmware as well as kernels., at least when newer firmware is needed for the "Hardware Enablement" part of the HWE kernels. No point in shipping newer kernels if the hardware won't work anyway because it lacks the required firmware. I know, I know, blobs aren't cool but some hardware needs them (like Kaby Lake graphics needs manual firmware installation on Ubuntu 16.04.3).

Time to open a bug report... or something.

[d2kx]

They need to start shipping newer firmware as well as kernels., at least when newer firmware is needed for the "Hardware Enablement" part of the HWE kernels. No point in shipping newer kernels if the hardware won't work anyway because it lacks the required firmware. I know, I know, blobs aren't cool but some hardware needs them (like Kaby Lake graphics needs manual firmware installation on Ubuntu 16.04.3).

Time to open a bug report... or something.

Huh? They always update the firmware when a new HWE backport ships and it's necessary.

http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changel...7.12/changelog

[lucrus]

A desktop oriented distro would choose 4.15 or even 4.16. A server oriented distro would choose 4.14 because it has LTS. Is Ubuntu desktop or server oriented? Is it both? Or neither one?

[Niarbeht]

A desktop oriented distro would choose 4.15 or even 4.16. A server oriented distro would choose 4.14 because it has LTS. Is Ubuntu desktop or server oriented? Is it both? Or neither one?

Canonical's probably big enough that they don't need to depend on upstream's LTS kernels in order to support a kernel for the lifetime of an Ubuntu LTS release. This would mean it's fine for both servers and desktops.

[nils_]

A desktop oriented distro would choose 4.15 or even 4.16. A server oriented distro would choose 4.14 because it has LTS. Is Ubuntu desktop or server oriented? Is it both? Or neither one?

IMHO, It doesn't make sense to run an outdated kernel just because it's a server. I rather run a current kernel and benefit from enhancements than run an older Kernel that basically receives the same bugfixes but no improvements.

[cRaZy-bisCuiT]

It does make sense to run a stable kernel. And from maintaining perspective it does make sense to run a LTS kernel. HWE or not, the original kernel is supported until the EOL. Therefore the kernel need to be patched / patches nerd to be backported if the kernel does not get official updates.

By the way, why was kernel 2.6.x around for ages? Did they change their release versioning at that time?

[Kendji]

Good news for Vega users

[andre30correia]

they should go with 4.16! even if a lts version of the distro

[andrebrait]

Use Debian testing Xfce with a custom kernel. Debian testing is a rolling release operation system. Then you do not care about release numbers and learn to install firmware yourself.
https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...in-living-room

I have my reasons to keep Ubuntu. I've been to Debian. And Arch. And Manjaro. And pretty much any distro you can name. Ultimately, since I need CUDA to work as intended and Ubuntu is an officially supported distro for it, I chose to keep it. As much as I like Linux I also like sane defaults and getting stuff working without much effort as I have almost no spare time whatsoever.
Plus, I'm on a 1080p 14" laptop. Unity is extremely nice with fractional scaling. Til GNOME gets it working as well as it does in Unity I'll just have to keep it.

Huh? They always update the firmware when a new HWE backport ships and it's necessary.

http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changel...7.12/changelog

I didn't know about that. They're taking quite a while to support Kaby Lake properly then. It even seems it works "ok" up to where I can test with a live media but it still complains about missing firmware.