Recently, someone in another thread asked... Why update your Linux kernel?
If it ain't broke, why fix it? I actually like that, and usually I feel the same way.
But in this case, what does "broke" mean? On one hand, my computer is working,
so that means nothing is "broke" right? But on the other hand, it may be working, but is it
working as securely, and efficiently as it could be?
Here is the Linux kernel change log between version 6.6.7 and 6.6.8
It has over 140 commits since 6.6.7, which was only released a couple of weeks ago.
If you look back, through all the change logs, since... I dunno say version.. 6.2.15
There are over 2,000 bug fixes, new features, security patches, enhancements, as well
as over 65 new hardware drivers.
Now, I have to be honest here, I did not go all the back to kernel 4.18.30. That would have
taken months, maybe even years to parse through all those change logs.
But I did randomly grab a few 4.18.x change logs, and a few 5.18.x change logs, and of course
the 6.6.8 change log listed above. Every single one of the ones I looked at had over 100
commits. In some cases over 150. On average I found 3 or 4 new hardware drivers in
every new "mid version" ( meaning the middle number in the version ).
Now I realize this isn't an exact scientific verifiable method, but I just go by the averages
of the security fixes, bug fixes, new features and new drivers per release. That means,
there have been over 7,000 bug fixes, over 2,200 new features, over 3,900 security fixes
and over 4,000 new hardware drivers since the Linux 4.18 kernel.
But let us say, you don't care about security. ( And actually vendors like Redhat do
keep doing security fixes on older kernels ) or you don't care about new hardware drivers.
( After all I didn't change any of my hardware in the last 5 years ). That still leaves efficiency.
A new version of a web server like apache or nginx, can run as much as 7% faster on a newer kernel.
Now I'm not saying everyone should run the latest and greatest, in fact I myself usually run a month
or two behind the latest kernel. But I do think it's worth upgrading from a five and a half year old
kernel ( 4.18.x for example - August 2018 ).
If you DO have newer hardware, newer AMD Radeon video cards, USB 3.2 hubs, NVMe disk drives,
DDR6 RAM, or especially a newer Wifi chip. Then updating the kernel that has all the latest drivers is
a no-brainer.
So even though your old kernel might not be "broke". It might not be working as good as it could be either.
If it ain't broke, why fix it? I actually like that, and usually I feel the same way.
But in this case, what does "broke" mean? On one hand, my computer is working,
so that means nothing is "broke" right? But on the other hand, it may be working, but is it
working as securely, and efficiently as it could be?
Here is the Linux kernel change log between version 6.6.7 and 6.6.8
It has over 140 commits since 6.6.7, which was only released a couple of weeks ago.
If you look back, through all the change logs, since... I dunno say version.. 6.2.15
There are over 2,000 bug fixes, new features, security patches, enhancements, as well
as over 65 new hardware drivers.
Now, I have to be honest here, I did not go all the back to kernel 4.18.30. That would have
taken months, maybe even years to parse through all those change logs.
But I did randomly grab a few 4.18.x change logs, and a few 5.18.x change logs, and of course
the 6.6.8 change log listed above. Every single one of the ones I looked at had over 100
commits. In some cases over 150. On average I found 3 or 4 new hardware drivers in
every new "mid version" ( meaning the middle number in the version ).
Now I realize this isn't an exact scientific verifiable method, but I just go by the averages
of the security fixes, bug fixes, new features and new drivers per release. That means,
there have been over 7,000 bug fixes, over 2,200 new features, over 3,900 security fixes
and over 4,000 new hardware drivers since the Linux 4.18 kernel.
But let us say, you don't care about security. ( And actually vendors like Redhat do
keep doing security fixes on older kernels ) or you don't care about new hardware drivers.
( After all I didn't change any of my hardware in the last 5 years ). That still leaves efficiency.
A new version of a web server like apache or nginx, can run as much as 7% faster on a newer kernel.
Now I'm not saying everyone should run the latest and greatest, in fact I myself usually run a month
or two behind the latest kernel. But I do think it's worth upgrading from a five and a half year old
kernel ( 4.18.x for example - August 2018 ).
If you DO have newer hardware, newer AMD Radeon video cards, USB 3.2 hubs, NVMe disk drives,
DDR6 RAM, or especially a newer Wifi chip. Then updating the kernel that has all the latest drivers is
a no-brainer.
So even though your old kernel might not be "broke". It might not be working as good as it could be either.