 Chances are, unless you're a Linux kernel developer, you probably don't pay a lot of attention to the Linux kernel itself. If you use Linux, you get a ton of Linux kernel updates, but you probably never really truly pay attention to them unless something goes wrong. If you install a kernel update and your computer stops working and you try to solve that problem, then you probably will pay attention to the Linux kernel, but every other time you get an update, it just comes through and you just carry on with your day. So today I want to ask this question, are Linux kernel updates actually important? Because there are a lot of them. If you go to kernel.org, which is where the kernel is hosted and where most of the announcements are made for the kernel, you can actually see how many updates there actually are to a kernel. So there are many kernels still in support. Even something that was released a long time ago is still in long term support, something like 4.9, which was released, I don't even know when I suppose I could look it up, but it's been was released many years ago. It's still in support. The latest update was released on the 14th of December. So it's still being updated. And in fact, you can see by the version number here how many updates there actually have been. So there have been 336 updates to the 4.9 kernel since it was released. And you can see for the other long term support releases, how many updates those have had. So as I said, kernel updates come very, very often. Even if you're using an LTS kernel, you get a lot of updates over time. And most of those updates usually have to do with security, especially if you're using an LTS update, you're not going to get a lot of new hardware support in that kernel, if any at all, probably not any at all. You're not going to get any new features or anything like that. You're going to be getting security patches only something that is meant to keep your computer as safe as possible. So again, I asked the question, are kernel updates actually important? Should you pay attention to them? So the answer to the question is yes and no. So I'm going to start off with the negative part of the answer first. So no, you shouldn't pay attention to kernel updates. And the reason why is because for the most part, they're irrelevant. You really don't need to pay attention to them because they're going to come through, they're not going to make any changes to your system. They're just going to update. They'll require a reboot after they're done. But that's really the only only interaction you're going to need in order to actually deal with a kernel update. That's really it. And this is especially true if you're running an LTS release because you're not getting anything new with those just security patches for the most part. So you don't have to worry about having to deal with things breaking probably because really all you're going to be getting is a security update. And you can just kind of ignore that. Just update your system like normal reboot afterwards and you're done. The reason why I would say yes is simply because there are often times when kernel patches or kernel updates are important, especially for people who are running the most current version of the kernel. So if you're running say Arch Linux or Gen 2 or Void Linux, something like that, you're probably running the most current version of the kernel. And for these folks that for you, if you're running one of these distros that's using the most version of the kernel updates for you are going to be much more important to pay attention to for multiple reasons. First, those updates are more likely to be bigger, right? They're more likely to contain more features, more hardware support, things like that. And with more stuff includes the possibility that things might break. So if you are updating your system and you pull in a kernel update and it happens to break, say, for example, a virtual box, this is a very common thing to happen. So virtual box requires certain headers and stuff like that to deal with the Linux kernel. And if you update to a brand new kernel before virtual box has been updated to support it, virtual box won't work, right? And this happens with a lot of virtual machine applications and stuff like that, things that are reliant on a certain version of the kernel. So if you're one of those people who use a distro that uses the most up to date version of the kernel, paying attention to the kernel updates can help you kind of keep track of when they come in. So you can kind of keep an idea of what might break after you do an update. And if you are someone who relies on, say, virtual box and you know for a fact virtual box hasn't been updated, you can hold back that kernel update until virtual box has been updated so nothing breaks. So in that situation, in that scenario, you should pay attention to kernel updates. It's very important for you because you need to make sure that your system stays running well. Now, that doesn't mean that kernel updates are going to break your computer every time or are going to break a piece of software every time. That's not true. In fact, it's probably hardly ever true. But there are situations where it does happen. So you just kind of want to pay attention to it when they come in. And usually, again, that only applies to people who are using the most up-to-date kernel and are going to continue on that track. So the answer to the overall question is kind of split down the middle because it really does depend on which side of the Linux user space that you're actually on. So are you using the long term support kernel or one of the long term support kernels, in which case kernel updates really aren't all that important to you. It doesn't mean that they're not important. It just means that you don't pay attention to them. So I should back that up just a little bit. I'm not saying that Linux kernel updates are never important. In fact, they're always important. Really, the point I'm trying to make is that you don't have to pay attention to them. If you're running one of the LTS kernels, you probably don't need to pay attention to them because the kernel update probably won't cause you any trouble really depending on what you're running. So if you're on the LTS, it should just continue to work and you could just ignore those for the most part. Those go through and you'll be fine. If you're running a more current version of the kernel and you're going to stay on that track, then paying attention to the kernel as it updates is going to be more important to you. So that's the kind of overarching answer to the question. Should you care about Linux kernel updates? The answer is it really does depend. And at the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with paying attention to the kernel updates, no matter what track you're on. Because, you know, just kind of paying attention to what is updating on your system is kind of important because if something does go wrong, even if you're on an LTS kernel or something like that, if you are paying attention to what's updating, you can kind of keep an eye out and maybe identify anything that comes up as a problem later on if something breaks. Same thing, obviously, if you're running a more rolling release type distro, paying attention to what's updating can allow you to troubleshoot better later on, especially if it means you're going to have to roll back to either a different kernel or a different piece of software version or whatever. So at the end of the day, despite what I've said at the beginning of the video where you can kind of just let the kernel fade into the background and let it do its thing, paying attention to your updates is probably a good habit to get into, if only so that if something goes wrong, you can have an idea of where to start troubleshooting. So that is it for this video. If you have thoughts on kernel updates, I'm sure that this is a very fascinating topic for a lot of people. You can leave those comments in the comment section below. I'd love to hear from you. You can follow me in Mastodon or Odyssey. Those links will be in the video description. 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