Yes, Linux 4.9 Is A Long-Term Kernel Release

[discordian]

4.9 is long being planned to be lts, GKH said "4.9 == next LTS kernel." half a year ago here:

https://plus.google.com/+gregkroahha...ts/DjCWwSo7kqY

This now is just to make it clear once again how plan is not changed.

If you look at my whole post you should understand the context.
It wasnt planned, much less official when debian decided to align their release with the future LTS kernel(s). I was assuming they had a similar schedule like for ex GCC, where their big releases will always (atleast planned to) be in the early year.

[Guest]

Yup at this time i think 4.9 perfectly matches for Ben and Debian 9... with that in mind 4.9 have chance to go into extended lts mode on kernel.org to say up to year 2022.

4.9 will be supported till january 2019. Afterwards, Debian will have to manually backport security fixes.

[dungeon]

4.9 will be supported till january 2019. Afterwards, Debian will have to manually backport security fixes.

That is what is written now (just as GKH's maintaince period) and i talked about possibility what will happen after these 2 years - GKH will leave it then, but someone else could continue and if everything goes well i am sure Ben would like to pick it up . No kernel was bumped immidiately on kernel.org as 5 year lts right at the start, but that might happen afterwards

[dungeon]

It wasnt planned...

When GKH said "4.9 == next LTS kernel" back in august, you should really read that as first target plan After that you can only expect info that plan is corrected because of reasones xyz or that everything goes as planned.

... much less official when debian decided to align their release with the future LTS kernel(s).

I don't see difference between much less or much more official or unoffcial Of course any plan can be changed or corrected, either by GKH or either by Debian... Ben who maintain 3.2 and 3.16 kernels on kernel.org is also Debian kernel maintainer... and he simply think of something like this at the time "as i already do all these i *prefer* for Debian 9 to pick something someone else maintain first for at least 18 to 24 months... where two handy choices there are some lts kernel that GKH will maintain or some kernel that Canonical will maintain", depending on what will happen at the time and depending on schedules of course, this or that might be less or more be better to pick up.

[Holograph]

I too thought 4.10 was going to be a LTS, and it was perfect for me having those nouveau improvements.

It has AMDGPU improvements, too. Though 4.9.5 finally has some AMDGPU stuff in the release notes (not a whole ton but hopefully more is on the way). Most of the 4.9 kernel release notes have been very light on AMDGPU/Radeon stuff. I'm really hoping AMD hasn't screwed up by missing the next LTS kernel and dooming us AMD Linux gamers to using newer, less supported kernels, which particularly sucks for those of us who also use products such as VMWare and Virtualbox and ZFSonLinux that don't always get fast updates for newer kernels (ZFSonLinux is a bit quicker than the other two but still sometimes takes a while).

But hey, hopefully AMD will be able to stop recommending people run 4.4 now, anyway. What a bunch of crap that is.

Do you by any chance know what will be the next lts?

Somewhere between 4.12 and 4.14 is almost definite in my opinion. Unfortunately that is not very specific or helpful but I don't know of any information that will allow us to be more specific at this time. Generally there are about 3-4 releases between LTS but sometimes they go 2 or 5 releases as well. It is true that several existing LTS will end official support and be relegated to distro support as someone already mentioned (sorry, forgot who), so maybe that will mean that there will be openings for more LTS support and thus maybe it'll be 4.12ish rather than 4.14ish.

[Guest]

That is what is written now (just as GKH's maintaince period) and i talked about possibility what will happen after these 2 years - GKH will leave it then, but someone else could continue and if everything goes well i am sure Ben would like to pick it up . No kernel was bumped immidiately on kernel.org as 5 year lts right at the start, but that might happen afterwards

Ah. I just realized Ben is the Debian kernel maintainer. That's good to know.

For me, the good thing about LTS kernels is they are something to fall back to if a new kernel doesn't like my hardware for the first few weeks after its release.