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Stable Linux mainline builds for Ubuntu
- NiekvdMaas 3y agoSee also https://github.com/bkw777/mainline https://github.com/bkw777/mainline which offers a UI to install the mainline kernels from mainline kernels PPA.
- rafaelturk 3y agochecking your github repo tels me that: This branch is 2273 commits ahead, 14587 commits behind torvalds:master. ????
- sigotirandolas 3y agoI was also confused since to my understanding "mainline" is usually the release candidates, i.e. Linus's master branch. Here "(stable) mainline" appears to mean the latest stable release without distribution-specific patches, what I'd call a "vanilla kernel".
- Arnavion 3y ago"Mainline kernels" also gets used to refer to kernels built from Linus's repo in general, as a way to distinguish them from kernels built from the OS vendor's / hardware vendor's branch. For example when people talk about phones or tablets having mainline support, they mean that Linus's tree has all the drivers etc for that hardware and using the hardware vendor's arbitrary kernel drop isn't needed. They don't necessarily mean that the support is only in master and not in a stable branch. Eg https://mainline.space/ https://mainline.space/ https://not.mainline.space/ https://not.mainline.space/
- CameronNemo 3y agoThe thing is you don't want Linus's kernels unless you are a kernel developer or testing something. Greg KH maintains the stable kernels. You want his branch.
- Hasz 3y agoIf I wanted to keep Secureboot enabled, would signing with a MOK and enrolling that key be sufficient?
- Filligree 3y agoYou say that as though it's easy. I've yet to find an explanation that's shorter than a book.
- jchw 3y agoThe truth is, it doesn't necessarily have to be a book long, but much like setting up PKI, it certainly can be. What we really need is simple tooling that handles just the case of "I want to sign kernels for my own machine(s)". Of course, some tools do exist for this case, but I'm not aware of one that is totally generic. Lanzaboote for NixOS seems interesting (disclaimer: have not tried.)
- Filligree 3y agoIt so happens I'm running NixOS... so thanks a lot for the reference! :D
- schlarpc 3y agoAnother option for NixOS is bootspec-secureboot, I'm using it with no real complaints: https://github.com/DeterminateSystems/bootspec-secureboot https://github.com/DeterminateSystems/bootspec-secureboot
- predictabl3 3y agoWait, wtf. There's this in addition to lanzaboote? But no mention of it? (And at one point there was another new list with bootspec support, maybe still is) Please, people, if you release software that overlaps or competes with another existing in the space, take the 3 minutes to write a comparison note or "why this exists". Please.
- lasermike026 3y agoI wonder what instabilities he has experienced?
- gigatexal 3y agoThe only reason I’d use Ubuntu these days is their shipped kernels coke with ZFS. Otherwise I’m a Fedora/CentOS boy.
- protoman3000 3y agoIt would be great if he gave some examples which issues he encountered. I just used the standard ubuntu out of box experience and had no issues ever.
- tracnar 3y agoHe answered that in a comment: https://stgraber.org/2023/08/24/stable-linux-mainline-builds/#comment-531853 https://stgraber.org/2023/08/24/stable-linux-mainline-builds...
- globular-toast 3y agoI think he means stable rather than mainline? I run the stable kernel, which I build myself. There is still the occasional regression. About a year ago it had a regression in the Intel graphics driver which broke graphics for my Haswell chip. A patch was available but this wasn't merged for months. Luckily Gentoo makes it super easy to apply custom patches so I did. IMO if you want to run a stable or mainline kernel yourself you might as well build it yourself too.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- herpderperator 3y agoYou can install mainline builds natively from here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/MainlineBuilds https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/MainlineBuilds
- justinclift 3y agoDon't the mainline builds not support ZFS though?
- robbintt 3y agoIt's covered in the article.
- vxNsr 3y agoComing from windows, I’m a little confused how this works, is he reinstalling Linux/Ubuntu every week on all his machines? Or is it possible to “upgrade in place” just the kernel and leave your files/data alone, if the latter, is there a good guide for how to do that and for a homelabber would that be a good idea to avoid security bugs?
- anvuong 3y agoInstalling kernel in Ubuntu is simply, given that you already have a kernel deb, a single line "apt-get install". You can create your own package apt repo or use the one provided by the author https://github.com/zabbly/linux#installation https://github.com/zabbly/linux#installation Be aware that upgrading kernel usually mess with graphics driver, especially for Nvidia. In the best case you'll have to unload and reload the Nvidia driver, in the worst case your driver just stops working.
- rubicks 3y agoIn the _most common_ case (with nvidia), your graphics stops working entirely and you spend (at least) an hour in a virtual console trying to undo what you did. Fun times.
- ploxiln 3y agoIn a classic Linux distro, various OS components are much less tightly coupled than in Windows. You can easily update the linux kernel, without updating all the system libraries, daemons, configs, tools, applications, much less your user configs and data. This is done every time "apt-get upgrade" installs an upgraded kernel package, which can be more often than monthly, depending on linux distro. And all the other components can be updated separately, like openssl libraries, init system binaries, tools like git, etc. You can swap in your own alternative for any component, if you know how. The linux kernel is one of the easiest components to swap because the linux syscall ABI is very backwards compatible. (Linux compatibility challenges are about user-land libraries which are all separate and up to the development policy of those library authors, modulated by the update policy of the distro.) I find modern Windows and macOS updates to be frustratingly opaque and slow. Linux distro updates, on the popular/common distros like debian and arch, are one of my favorite parts of using the system. It'll just install updates for like 200 separate packages (libraries, tools, etc) bang, bang, bang, less than a minute, done. And with the absurdly high speed of todays CPUs and storage, why should it take longer? What are Windows and macOS even doing? I will accept linux has some drawbacks and disadvantages, but the system package managers have been fantastic, for about 2 decades now.
- hardwaresofton 3y agoExcited to see what Stéphane builds next. Here's an intro to his project Incus (TIL, fork of LXC): https://stgraber.org/2023/08/10/a-month-later https://stgraber.org/2023/08/10/a-month-later
- rubicks 3y agoCan anyone see how these Debian packages are being built? Asking because the last time I looked at Canonical's packaging, it was a little hairy.
- mise_en_place 3y agoIt's quite trivial actually. It's just `make deb-pkg`. It may complain about a cert. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/scripts/package/builddeb https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/scripts/packag...
- rubicks 3y agoAh, yes, I'm familiar with this. That's how "vanilla" kernel source supports Debian packaging. Lintian predictably complains, but I suppose that's to be expected.
- Nux 3y agoIf anyone is interested in this but for CentOS/EL 7, 8 & 9 there's the awesome elrepo repo. http://elrepo.org/tiki/kernel-ml http://elrepo.org/tiki/kernel-ml
- timClicks 3y agoI didn't realize that Canonical had lost Stéphane. Huge loss for them. Am incredibly excited what comes from his period of self-employment.
- IronWolve 3y agoHow is this different than xanmod, liquorix or pf-kernel? I see zfs mentioned, is zfs not included in the gaming/performance project kernels?
- withinboredom 3y agoNo offense to the maintainers of the 'performance' and 'gaming' kernels, but they're usually not that well maintained. TBF, I haven't tried ALL of them, but a lot of the popular ones. They usually configure 'odd' defaults that risk stability (in the 'staying up' sense, as well as data integrity sense).
- spookie 3y agoSame. I tried some, and even in games they didn't provide much of an improvement. Sometimes performing worse, even. I just put some niceties like irqbalance and add a few lines to sysctl.conf for better latency at a cost of throughput (doesn't matter if you're just using the system as a desktop and not as a server). And that gives me a very nice experience overall. Edit: Please, be careful. This is under a very well performing machine, take a look at replies for more information.
- effie 3y agoHow do you improve the latency? Especially reacting to mouse and keyboard, I have an old PC which could use that.
- withinboredom 3y agoBy decreasing latency, you decrease throughput. Thus if you have a slow and old computer, you could end up dropping inputs entirely by decreasing latency, or make it feel sluggish/laggy due to it processing a queue.
- spookie 3y agoYou're correct, I should add something to my post.
- unethical_ban 3y agoI wonder if he has any insight on why the ubuntu kernel is so heavily patched. How much of it is legitimate customization for things like ZFS, and what are in his opinion unnecessary changes?