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Chrome "unofficially" dropped support for pre-3.16 kernels, such as the kernel in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, about half a year ago. More precisely, they introduced a bug

Chrome "unofficially" dropped support for pre-3.16 kernels, such as the kernel in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, about half a year ago. More precisely, they introduced a bug that caused installing extensions to fail with that kernel, and then declined to fix it. https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=401655 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=401655 See comment #47: "Ok, while it sounds like this is technically a regression, I'm going to mark this as Wontfix because there is a reasonable workaround of updating your kernel."

ryanprichard 12y ago
At least there seems to be a supported method for updating the 14.04 kernel: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TrustyTahr/ReleaseNotes#LTS_Hardware_Enablement_Stack https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TrustyTahr/ReleaseNotes#LTS_Hardware... Apparently, Ubuntu 14.04.2 installs a 3.16 kernel by default, and previous 14.04 installs can be updated by installing a bunch of "*-utopic" packages.
- skuhn 12y ago
  This seems like a colossal mess waiting to happen. I'm glad that I read their plan, so that I can completely avoid it. The allure of Ubuntu LTS releases (currently 12.04 and 14.04) is the extended support cycle -- practically speaking the kernel is the biggest component of this for a lot of people. If you use the 3.16 kernel (from Ubuntu 14.10) on 14.04, you are now on a 6 month support cycle [1]. One which doesn't even have defined dates (they're all still TBD). Now you have to keep running on the kernel upgrade treadmill to maintain support, moving to backported kernels from progressively newer Ubuntu releases every 6 months. [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack#Kernel.2BAC8-Support.LTS_Kernel_Support_Schedule https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack#Kernel.2BA...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - oliwarner 12y ago
    Overreacting much? The shortened support is limited to the packages you upgrade. It's a 9 month cycle with a new version available every in 6 months. Most importantly, these are just packages, they can be uninstalled of they don't work and you fall back to LTS versions. And this is all the same for 12.04.
  - acdha 12y ago
    > practically speaking the kernel is the biggest component of this for a lot of people. Really? I mean, step back from your initial gut reaction and ask yourself how many software developers could even name which version of the kernel their code runs on without checking. Most developers never make a syscall directly and, increasingly, aren't even calling something like libc directly because they use higher-level libraries. Sure, some people really care cause they recently hit an issue with specific drivers and a few people are using a really new feature, but that's a much smaller group than the number of people running code which doesn't even depend on Linux, much less a specific point release. Looking at the release notes, I'd say there are a LOT more people affected by real bugs which are fixed in 14.04.2 than will be affected by hypothetical bugs nobody seems to have noticed yet: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TrustyTahr/ReleaseNotes/ChangeSummary/14.04.2 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TrustyTahr/ReleaseNotes/ChangeSummar...
- danieldk 12y ago
  For some reason, Chrome seems to work fine with extensions on my Ubuntu 14.04, kernel 3.13. I agree with those saying this is completely stupid. In corporate environments, there are a lot of Ubuntu LTS, RHEL, and CentOS desktops. They won't be upgraded to >= 3.16 for years. Edit: oh, wait, this starts in the next version.
rodgerd 12y ago
Happily there's an even more reasonable workaround of upgrading to a browser that doesn't dictate kernel versions.
- noir_lord 12y ago
  Yep, Decisions like "well we broke it but upgrade your kernel to fix it" is why I'm now on Chrome and not Chromium anymore.
  - guipsp 12y ago
    Chrome is chromium.
    - frewsxcv 12y ago
      Be careful there. Chrome is based on Chromium.
- blfr 12y ago
  The whole point of even having a kernel is to run the software you like. Kernel by itself doesn't really do anything for you. There's a feature of the kernel that Chromium wants to use. That's a perfectly good reason to upgrade. User software should dictate kernel versions.
  - Lennie 12y ago
    Well, it's a bit more subtle than that. Because it were the Chromimum developers which created the feature in the first place. seccomp was introduced in the Linux kernel because the Chromium developers wanted a good way to reduce the harm Chromium browser processes could do if they got compromised. Chromium is pretty much the only user of seccomp right now. (although for example Docker also has support for it, but I don't think it's widely used) Now Kees Cook who implemented TSYNC for seccomp in the Linux kernel works for Google. The kernel commit even lists his @chromium.org email address.
  - gnoway 12y ago
colechristensen 12y ago
7 months. Linux 3.16 is 7 months old. The attitude of the Chrome team is extremely obnoxious. Some distributions support versions 10 years and beyond and there are plenty of reasonable reasons to want to use them as such. Requiring a 7 month old kernel is absurd. I keep getting the feeling that Chrome isn't the browser for me.
- reidrac 12y ago
  Without defending Chrome team here; when a distro provides long time support (say > 1 year) I don't think is upstream responsibility to support the packages for that period of time. If the distro is upgrading the browser package I think that may break the API/ABI stability that a long time support distribution should provide, so I can't see why this is a Chrome problem. Also it sounds wrong that a web browser depends on the kernel version; so I'm with you that there are other browsers supporting Linux.
  - erglkjahlkh 12y ago
    Well put. Although someone makes a LTS distribution, it really does not mean 3rd parties would be compelled or required to support that steadily aging platform. When you combine the fact that not even Ubuntu developers really support the LTS (9/10 of the developers flock to the newest release, and the bug reports towards LTS get generally ignored - the LTS tagged bug queues are graveyards), I can not see the whole point of making LTS version available in the first place. That being said, 7 months is a bit small window of support for a specific platform component. I would understand not supporting 1-2 years old kernel/glibc/whatever, but 7 months is really not enough.
    - dogma1138 12y ago
      Well it's tricky, MSFT actually ties certain vendors to support their OS as long as it's under support. For example if you want to participate in the WHQL program you have to have a version for each supported MSFT OS. Chrome is still supported on Windows XP, so is FF, on Windows vendors not only do not seem to drop support but actually extend beyond MSFT's requirements. While canonical is surely not MSFT but when you make an LTS program you either have to get 3rd party vendors on board, or manage and update the packages yourself to make sure they will be compatible with your own software, or to make updates to your LTS distro to keep it compatible with the newer packages. While the OS is quite important, it's usually not the piece of software neither end users nor corporate users care about, for them it's just a platform to run the software they actually use. And if the platform loses support for a major piece of software after less than a year you can't blame anyone besides the maintainer of that platform. The Linux community really needs to get their shit together, with every step forward these past few years they've seen to be taking 2 steps back. With PAAS becoming more and more popular, it really should only take Apple to release a general server OS (no OSX Server doesn't count) to push it back completely into the realm of BBS hobbyists these days.
fpgeek 12y ago
First, I'll note that plenty of people use Chrome without extensions. This issue wasn't a showstopper for any of them. Second, you cut out the rest of the comment: "If that causes great hardship for anyone and you want to do the work to figure out what's going on submit patches to fix it, I can provide pointers for where to start looking and code reviews for the patch." Since that comment has anyone done anything other than updating their kernel and/or complaining? If not, why would the Chromium team think this issue was important?
- yuhong 12y ago
  I wonder if any distro's Chromium package had a patch.
- teraflop 12y ago
  I don't think the other half of that comment affects my point: that the Chrome team is declining to fix bugs that only manifest on older kernels, and hence it's reasonable to call those kernels "unsupported". I agree that it's the Chrome team's prerogative to decide that supporting those kernels is unimportant.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- vacri 12y ago
  So you only care about problems if the user is a skilled developer, and then only if they're actively solving the bug (because skilled programmers are never involved in other projects eating their time...)?
  - lrem 12y ago
    I'm pretty sure that's the exact audience they had in mind when opensourcing (note that closed-source Chrome is still available for Linux).
KaiserPro 12y ago
Lots of people are stuck on RHEL6 which means we have to use a wrapper to get chrome installed.
kernelreqs 12y ago
I'm on 3.10 kernel branch and have no issues installing extensions.

ryanprichard 12y ago

At least there seems to be a supported method for updating the 14.04 kernel: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TrustyTahr/ReleaseNotes#LTS_Hardware_Enablement_Stack https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TrustyTahr/ReleaseNotes#LTS_Hardware... Apparently, Ubuntu 14.04.2 installs a 3.16 kernel by default, and previous 14.04 installs can be updated by installing a bunch of "*-utopic" packages.

skuhn 12y ago
This seems like a colossal mess waiting to happen. I'm glad that I read their plan, so that I can completely avoid it. The allure of Ubuntu LTS releases (currently 12.04 and 14.04) is the extended support cycle -- practically speaking the kernel is the biggest component of this for a lot of people. If you use the 3.16 kernel (from Ubuntu 14.10) on 14.04, you are now on a 6 month support cycle [1]. One which doesn't even have defined dates (they're all still TBD). Now you have to keep running on the kernel upgrade treadmill to maintain support, moving to backported kernels from progressively newer Ubuntu releases every 6 months. [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack#Kernel.2BAC8-Support.LTS_Kernel_Support_Schedule https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack#Kernel.2BA...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- oliwarner 12y ago
  Overreacting much? The shortened support is limited to the packages you upgrade. It's a 9 month cycle with a new version available every in 6 months. Most importantly, these are just packages, they can be uninstalled of they don't work and you fall back to LTS versions. And this is all the same for 12.04.
- acdha 12y ago
  > practically speaking the kernel is the biggest component of this for a lot of people. Really? I mean, step back from your initial gut reaction and ask yourself how many software developers could even name which version of the kernel their code runs on without checking. Most developers never make a syscall directly and, increasingly, aren't even calling something like libc directly because they use higher-level libraries. Sure, some people really care cause they recently hit an issue with specific drivers and a few people are using a really new feature, but that's a much smaller group than the number of people running code which doesn't even depend on Linux, much less a specific point release. Looking at the release notes, I'd say there are a LOT more people affected by real bugs which are fixed in 14.04.2 than will be affected by hypothetical bugs nobody seems to have noticed yet: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TrustyTahr/ReleaseNotes/ChangeSummary/14.04.2 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TrustyTahr/ReleaseNotes/ChangeSummar...
danieldk 12y ago
For some reason, Chrome seems to work fine with extensions on my Ubuntu 14.04, kernel 3.13. I agree with those saying this is completely stupid. In corporate environments, there are a lot of Ubuntu LTS, RHEL, and CentOS desktops. They won't be upgraded to >= 3.16 for years. Edit: oh, wait, this starts in the next version.

rodgerd 12y ago

Happily there's an even more reasonable workaround of upgrading to a browser that doesn't dictate kernel versions.

noir_lord 12y ago
Yep, Decisions like "well we broke it but upgrade your kernel to fix it" is why I'm now on Chrome and not Chromium anymore.
- guipsp 12y ago
  Chrome is chromium.
  - frewsxcv 12y ago
    Be careful there. Chrome is based on Chromium.
blfr 12y ago
The whole point of even having a kernel is to run the software you like. Kernel by itself doesn't really do anything for you. There's a feature of the kernel that Chromium wants to use. That's a perfectly good reason to upgrade. User software should dictate kernel versions.
- Lennie 12y ago
  Well, it's a bit more subtle than that. Because it were the Chromimum developers which created the feature in the first place. seccomp was introduced in the Linux kernel because the Chromium developers wanted a good way to reduce the harm Chromium browser processes could do if they got compromised. Chromium is pretty much the only user of seccomp right now. (although for example Docker also has support for it, but I don't think it's widely used) Now Kees Cook who implemented TSYNC for seccomp in the Linux kernel works for Google. The kernel commit even lists his @chromium.org email address.
- gnoway 12y ago

colechristensen 12y ago

7 months. Linux 3.16 is 7 months old. The attitude of the Chrome team is extremely obnoxious. Some distributions support versions 10 years and beyond and there are plenty of reasonable reasons to want to use them as such. Requiring a 7 month old kernel is absurd. I keep getting the feeling that Chrome isn't the browser for me.

reidrac 12y ago
Without defending Chrome team here; when a distro provides long time support (say > 1 year) I don't think is upstream responsibility to support the packages for that period of time. If the distro is upgrading the browser package I think that may break the API/ABI stability that a long time support distribution should provide, so I can't see why this is a Chrome problem. Also it sounds wrong that a web browser depends on the kernel version; so I'm with you that there are other browsers supporting Linux.
- erglkjahlkh 12y ago
  Well put. Although someone makes a LTS distribution, it really does not mean 3rd parties would be compelled or required to support that steadily aging platform. When you combine the fact that not even Ubuntu developers really support the LTS (9/10 of the developers flock to the newest release, and the bug reports towards LTS get generally ignored - the LTS tagged bug queues are graveyards), I can not see the whole point of making LTS version available in the first place. That being said, 7 months is a bit small window of support for a specific platform component. I would understand not supporting 1-2 years old kernel/glibc/whatever, but 7 months is really not enough.
  - dogma1138 12y ago
    Well it's tricky, MSFT actually ties certain vendors to support their OS as long as it's under support. For example if you want to participate in the WHQL program you have to have a version for each supported MSFT OS. Chrome is still supported on Windows XP, so is FF, on Windows vendors not only do not seem to drop support but actually extend beyond MSFT's requirements. While canonical is surely not MSFT but when you make an LTS program you either have to get 3rd party vendors on board, or manage and update the packages yourself to make sure they will be compatible with your own software, or to make updates to your LTS distro to keep it compatible with the newer packages. While the OS is quite important, it's usually not the piece of software neither end users nor corporate users care about, for them it's just a platform to run the software they actually use. And if the platform loses support for a major piece of software after less than a year you can't blame anyone besides the maintainer of that platform. The Linux community really needs to get their shit together, with every step forward these past few years they've seen to be taking 2 steps back. With PAAS becoming more and more popular, it really should only take Apple to release a general server OS (no OSX Server doesn't count) to push it back completely into the realm of BBS hobbyists these days.

fpgeek 12y ago

First, I'll note that plenty of people use Chrome without extensions. This issue wasn't a showstopper for any of them. Second, you cut out the rest of the comment: "If that causes great hardship for anyone and you want to do the work to figure out what's going on submit patches to fix it, I can provide pointers for where to start looking and code reviews for the patch." Since that comment has anyone done anything other than updating their kernel and/or complaining? If not, why would the Chromium team think this issue was important?

yuhong 12y ago
I wonder if any distro's Chromium package had a patch.
teraflop 12y ago
I don't think the other half of that comment affects my point: that the Chrome team is declining to fix bugs that only manifest on older kernels, and hence it's reasonable to call those kernels "unsupported". I agree that it's the Chrome team's prerogative to decide that supporting those kernels is unimportant.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
vacri 12y ago
So you only care about problems if the user is a skilled developer, and then only if they're actively solving the bug (because skilled programmers are never involved in other projects eating their time...)?
- lrem 12y ago
  I'm pretty sure that's the exact audience they had in mind when opensourcing (note that closed-source Chrome is still available for Linux).

KaiserPro 12y ago

Lots of people are stuck on RHEL6 which means we have to use a wrapper to get chrome installed.

kernelreqs 12y ago

I'm on 3.10 kernel branch and have no issues installing extensions.