Re: [gentoo-user] old kernel on Gentoo

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 3:35 PM james <garftd@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> I use a 3.18.40 kernel, currently, on one of my AMD systems. It has
> thousands of source build packages, not only from portage but many others.

Keep in mind that you're running a non-longterm kernel, which means
that if there is a known regression or security issue in your kernel,
a kernel update to fix it wouldn't be provided upstream.

If you were running 3.16 or 4.4 you would get these updates.  If you
plan to stick with a kernel for a very long time you should try to
pick one that is designated as a longterm kernel.  3.16.85 was
released just a week ago.  It obviously doesn't get very frequent
updates, but if something important comes along they'll release a fix.
I'd have to check the timelines but you might have unmitigated Spectre
vulnerabilities in that kernel.

Also, you mention AMD.  If you happen to be using a Ryzen processor
there were a number of updates to the kernel to better support it.  I
forget which kernels have these but if you don't have those patches
you'd probably benefit from an upgrade.  If you have a pre-Ryzen CPU
then that won't matter much.

I completely agree that you can get away with a longterm kernel and
there are a lot of reasons for doing so.  I just recommend sticking
with one that actually is supported.

-- 
Rich