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ordu • yesterday at 6:35 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

All of them need to do it. There maybe differences, like different number of versions of kernel supported, so less of backporting, but still distros have to provide fixed kernels.

With Gentoo I believe it is more fun, because of all the options gentoo provides out of a box. More kernels, more work to do.

    ls /var/db/repos/gentoo/sys-kernel/
    asahi-sources/       git-sources/         linux-next/          scx-loader/
    bliss-initramfs/     gnumach/             metadata.xml         udev-hid-bpf/
    cryptodev/           hurd/                mips-sources/        ugrd/
    dkms/                installkernel/       modprobed-db/        vanilla-kernel/
    dracut/              kci-dev/             pf-sources/          vanilla-sources/
    dracut-crypt-ssh/    kergen/              raspberrypi-image/   virtme-ng/
    genkernel/           kpatch/              raspberrypi-sources/ zen-sources/
    gentoo-kernel/       linux-docs/          rt-sources/
    gentoo-kernel-bin/   linux-firmware/      rumpkernel/
    gentoo-sources/      linux-headers/       scx/
Not all these directories are different kernel packages, but anything with -kernel or -sources at the end is.

Replies

kwhat4 • yesterday at 10:25 PM

This is a bit misleading. All of genkernel/, gentoo-kernel/, gentoo-kernel-bin/, gentoo-sources/, git-sources/, vanilla-kernel/ and vanilla-sources/ are all different packages for the same Linux Kernel. There are multiple slots per package for the various supported LTS versions of said kernel but they will all get +/- the same set of patches for these issues. There is some support for other kernels like Darwin, BSD and HURD but your millage will vary.

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Kernel/Packages/en

➕ show 1 reply
tardedmeme • yesterday at 8:02 PM

When I used Gentoo the normal was to install gentoo-sources, which gives you the kernel source code but doesn't compile it. You then have to compile and install the kernel yourself without any support from the package manager.

If you're running on a different platform then perhaps you need the raspberrypi or asahi kernel