SystemD 251 drops support for 4.9 and 4.14 kernel?

Linux Discussion
1

How long ago was Linux 4.14 released?

“The minimum kernel version now has been bumped from Linux 3.15 to 4.15. Pre-4.15 kernels are no longer supported.”

As someone noted in the comments
05 May 2022, 02:55 PM from andyprough

“The minimum kernel version now has been bumped from Linux 3.15 to 4.15. Pre-4.15 kernels are no longer supported.
Wow that’s a big jump. The 4.9 and 4.14 LTS kernels will not hit EOL until 2023 and 2024 respectively. And 4.4, 4.9, and 4.14 are all supposed to receive Super LTS support through at least 2026. These are exactly the types of machines that would be likely to set up as stable servers using Debian, and yet Debian’s only available init system is throwing them on the trash heap. Good thing there’s always Slackware, I guess.”

2

Can’t say as I see this as a big deal really, Any system that is still using a pre 4.15 kernel is also probably running a older version of systemd. Which will still support those older kernels. Looking at Debian specifically, It has version 247.3 of systemd and version 5.10.106 of the Linux kernel.

I don’t see any reason why you would want such a old version of the kernel yet want to run the very latest version of systemd.

2 Likes
3

I use Debian on my server.

Debian Stretch, the only version that this might even be a thing for, has already jumped from 3.16 to 4.9 and another jump wouldn’t be out of the question. However, more importantly Debian Stretch is end of life in June 2022.

Considering June 2022 isn’t really that far away, and that Debian Buster isn’t affected by this change, it really doesn’t seem like that big of a deal to me.

Edit for inits:

finit
sysvinit
openrc
s6
runnit

These are all packaged and available in the Debian repositories.

4

Exactly and actually it is not a big deal at all. Older versions of Debian are normally not receiving newer software. There are some exceptions like backports.

It would be like caring why the newest Gnome is not included in Debian Bullseye.

Also, looking at Debian’s repos, they include systemd in backports! I never pulled a newer systemd from backports anyway. I do not even need a newer kernel.

2 Likes
5

Well put, Debian friend. Indeed an unaffected kernel is also in stretch backports as well.

1 Like