Stable kernel updates

In fact, information about the security impact of bugs/fixes is deliberately omitted from changelogs and commit metadata.

>How do you know whether I contribute or not?

The overwhelming King Canute complex you're exhibiting. You're acting like kernel version numbers are some word of power bringing 0-days and system-crashing bugs into existence and then trying to loudly shoo them away in terror as if it'll accomplish anything except make you look like some kind of digital anti-vaxxer; anyone with even the most distant familiarity with any kind of software development knows the opposite is true: bugs *already* *exist* in what you're running *right* *now*, updates are there to cure them.

Likewise nobody's holding a gun to your head to deploy each and every change - how many similar updates have you missed for your browser, or your phone, or your router? Did the world end without them?

Use some common sense, please. If your rollout process depends on upstream's numbering process (not even the actual rate of commits, just some arbitrary number!) being chronically lethargic, your process is *broken*.

Well, posts attacking people for doing important and tiresome stabilization work, distilling something resembling stability from a firehose of commits, is not merely "not sycophantic". I'd call it pretty appalling actually.

(Sure, there are regressions, but the rate is much lower than it used to be and frankly given how hard the job is I'm amazed it's not far higher. I can say that without the stable tree, it would be very hard to use anything but enterprise kernels for any serious work at all: you can't use the kernels Linus releases without your heart in your mouth, since they just have too many serious bugs and not enough real runtime, and in the absence of the stable kernels they'd only get fixed at the same time as more bugs are *introduced*, leaving you with nothing usable at all.)

So please stop acting like getting given bugfixes for free is appalling. You are not obliged to install every stable kernel. You can install them whenever you want, or not at all. It's up to you: but if there were only very rare releases (or none) as you seem to want, you would have no choice at all.

Constructive criticism is fine: I'm sure that the kernel maintainers know that there are issues and welcome useful feedback. However, responding to all articles about kernel releases with derogatory comments like "Lame!" and "Ludicrous!" doesn't help matters, because there's nothing actionable about those; they seem like ad hominem statements. What exactly is ludicrous? Have those issues been reported upstream?

For me, I had some issues with the 4.13 series on a couple of my test computers, but that's why I keep several older copies of the kernel around. If you're using the most recent builds, you're going to encounter some issues because there are going to be less people who have tested them. If you want kernels that have had more exposure, don't use 4.14 yet; let people who are more willing to accept risk test them first.