On Wednesday, 17 April 2024 11:37:04 BST Dr Rainer Woitok wrote:
> Grant,
> 
> On Tuesday, 2024-04-16 19:26:25 -0000, you wrote:
> > ...
> > That means that all gentoo-sources stable kernels are "longterm"
> > kernel versions on kernel.org.  It does not mean that all "longterm"
> > kernel versions from kernel.org are available as "stable" in
> > gentoo-sources.
> > 
> > It is a statement that "gentoo-sources stable" is a subset of
> > "kernel.org longterm".
> 
> This sort of deteriorates into a debate about words rather than meanings
> without explaining HOW LONG  such a series  of related kernels are main-
> tained and provided.   After all, "longterm" or "LTS" suggest that these
> lines of developement are less short-lived than others.   To give an ex-
> ample: the oldest "longterm" kernels  listed on "kernel.org" are 4.19.*,
> 5.4.* and 5.10.*.  Of these only 5.10.* is still available from Gentoo.
> 
> Digging through my Gentoo installation logs,  I can see that 4.19.72 was
> one of the first kernels I built myself.   This was somewhen in the mid-
> dle of 2019, that is, not yet five years back.  And this kernel line has
> already vanished  from Gentoo.   So what time span  are we talking about
> when we say "LTS Gentoo kernel"?  Roughly four, three or two years?  And
> why is the support provided by Gentoo significantly shorter than that by
> "kernel.org"?
> 
> Sincerely,
>   Rainer

LTS kernels were being supported for ~6 years, although the projected EOL I 
see here indicates later LTS releases may not be supported for as long:

https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html

The stable gentoo-sources are tree cleaned more frequently, so the oldest 
stable release for amd64 in portage is now 5.10.212:

$ eix gentoo-sources
[I] sys-kernel/gentoo-sources
     Available versions:  
     (5.10.208) *5.10.208^bs
     (5.10.212) 5.10.212^bs
     (5.10.213) ~5.10.213^bs
     (5.10.214) ~5.10.214^bs
     (5.10.215) ~5.10.215^bs
     (5.15.147) *5.15.147^bs
     (5.15.151) 5.15.151^bs
     (5.15.152) ~5.15.152^bs
     (5.15.153) ~5.15.153^bs
     (5.15.154) ~5.15.154^bs
     (5.15.155) ~5.15.155^bs
     (6.1.74) *6.1.74^bs
     (6.1.81) 6.1.81^bs
     (6.1.83) ~6.1.83^bs
     (6.1.84) ~6.1.84^bs
     (6.1.85) ~6.1.85^bs
     (6.1.86) ~6.1.86^bs
     (6.6.13) *6.6.13^bs
     (6.6.21) 6.6.21^bs
     (6.6.24) ~6.6.24^bs
     (6.6.25) ~6.6.25^bs
     (6.6.26) ~6.6.26^bs
     (6.6.26-r1) ~6.6.26-r1^bs
     (6.6.27) ~6.6.27^bs
     (6.8.3) ~6.8.3^bs
     (6.8.4) ~6.8.4^bs
     (6.8.5) ~6.8.5^bs
     (6.8.5-r1) ~6.8.5-r1^bs
     (6.8.6) ~6.8.6^bs
       {build experimental symlink}
     Installed versions:  6.6.21(6.6.21)^bs(03:21:20 24/03/24)(-build -
experimental -symlink)
     Homepage:            https://dev.gentoo.org/~mpagano/genpatches
     Description:         Full sources including the Gentoo patchset for the 
6.8 kernel tree