Running the latest Linux kernel

When Meltdown and Spectre struck, it took Ubuntu a few days to release an updated kernel. It made me think if I could run the latest unmodified (vanilla) kernel from kernel.org and didn’t have to wait for the distribution to release their version.

As it turned out, running the latest kernel is a pleasant experience. Only once I’ve encountered a bug, when WiFi on my laptop stopped working after upgrading to version 4.17.2.

There is a downside, of course: you have to built the kernel yourself. Instructions and scripts for building a kernel for Debian/Ubuntu can be found here: devops-toolkit/recent-stable-kernel.

On a side note, I was surprized to see how many changes are released every time. It must be a difficult job for a distribution to analyze all these changes and try to pick important ones for their own kernel. Especially since kernel developers almost never mark security fixes as such.

Here is a good blog post by Greg Kroah-Hartman, a kernel developer who is maintaining the stable kernel branch, about the linux kernel release and development models.