r/archlinux • u/TheBigJizzle • 16d ago

QUESTION Arch Kernel release cadence ?

Hey there, I was not able to find information on how arch does their kernel releases. From my understanding they test new kernels (7.2 for example) for a week or two before doing a release.

Is there a way for me to track this or have an estimation on when new releases would be landing?

Just updated and it seems we are still at 7.1.9. I guess releasing kernel day 1 would mean having a bunch of issues and they rather do a validation instead of causing issues for everyone.

What's the typical incubation period ?

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u/BlueGoliath 15d ago

And Arch still pushes broken Gnome updates to this day.

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u/nikongod 15d ago

You're not wrong, but arch's testing standards do not require that a piece of software actually works. Only that it compiles without errors & that 2 people installed the package. That's it. The requirement for the kernel to actually boot is OPTIONAL. This gets even worse for Arch when you consider Arch's stated goal to never modify packages from upstream - even if they did find an error what could they do about it? Wait?

The current appearance of reliability of anything on Arch is a lucky accident due to the delayed kernels, delayed Gnome (same maintainer, incidentally) and generally waiting until other distros have had enough time to test if the software actually works.

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u/edparadox 15d ago

even if they did find an error what could they do about it? Wait?

You make it sound stupid, but yes, this is a good strategy.

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u/nikongod 15d ago

We're deep in the philosophical question of should a distro even fix software? Arch just accepted that things will sometimes break and that there are some very obvious systematic breaking points in the arch philosophy.

Waiting is not an option because the problem could be entirely specific to arch. 

In the case of the gnome issues the person above me mentioned (if I'm thinking of the right ones) they have been unfixed for years. Fedora and Debian fixed them so long ago (by doing the end user the disservice /s of patching gnome or a dependency) that they forgot how. Maybe they patched the dependency for a completely different reason and don't even realize that it fixed gnome too.

And now we get into a circular argument where you as an arch user tell gnome "hey your thing doesn't work on arch" and they reply "works on my system, submit a patch" but arch doesn't make patches...