Hi! This is a bit of a newbie question, so please bear with me.

I purchased a laptop that has a specific hardware issue under Linux (the keyboard does not function). A patch fixing the issue was approved for 6.8 and incorporated in the “stable tree” of older kernels: 5.4, 5.10, 5.15, 6.6, 6.7, etc.

My question is: Do distros ship with an updated kernel that incorporates all the patches? Or does the user need to update after installation for the patches to be applied? I imagine that it may perhaps vary from distro to distro, but I honestly don’t know.

The question is relevant for me because, potentially, I would have to install the actual distro and update, rather than just try out a live version.

  • TimeSquirrel@kbin.social
    2·
    6 months ago

    unless there is specific reason to revert them because the patch is known to cause more issues than it fixes

    Just experienced this for the first time on Debian last month. They had some issues with a kernel update corrupting some filesystems or something, and while the new kernel was right there available in the Discover app, they had blocked the download as an emergency measure.