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I felt brave today and decided to upgrade my 64-bit Linux Mint Nadia KDE system's kernel to 3.8.2 stable.

I did it using the following steps and have not experienced any problems so far. Smooth sailing, although I don't use this little old laptop for much besides Firefox and Ktorrent. I probably didn't need to do it, but I just like the idea of using one of the latest stable kernels. Gives me a bit more reason not to switch over to OpenSuse 12.3, which was released just today, by the way.

I had pretty good results too, but after putting the laptop to sleep (and failing to wake up), I can no longer login to my desktop. I can't tell from dmesg or syslog what is happening, but when I switch to TTY and execute a restart, I see some nouveau errors popup. I can login fine when I go back to 3.5 kernels.

Update: I managed to get logged in using the KDE Failsafe session. I'll have to see if I can figure anything out from the logs. I thought I might be able to login regularly after logging in via KDE Failsafe, but it still "freezes" after username/password authentication.

tyraen wrote:I had pretty good results too, but after putting the laptop to sleep (and failing to wake up), I can no longer login to my desktop. I can't tell from dmesg or syslog what is happening, but when I switch to TTY and execute a restart, I see some nouveau errors popup. I can login fine when I go back to 3.5 kernels.

Update: I managed to get logged in using the KDE Failsafe session. I'll have to see if I can figure anything out from the logs. I thought I might be able to login regularly after logging in via KDE Failsafe, but it still "freezes" after username/password authentication.

By nouveau, do you mean Nvidia's video driver? My laptop has an Intel chipset. It is pure Intel from what I intel.
Had some wonky experiences copying files to a flash drive--the bits per second and time remaining were wildly off and variable, and the message box itself kept getting messed up, but that may be a KDE bug for all I know, as I don't copy files to a flash drive every day.
Haven't had any kernel problems on my Lenovo Thinkpad R60 with intel everything.

Howsomeever!

I DID have a HUGE problem with my htpc rig when upgrading to Linux kernel 3.8.2 and I had to back out of the new kernel version. You know, go into Synaptic and completely remove the 3.8.2. "kernel" files (search for "kernel", to find). Fortunately for me, it was not necessary to use the grub menu to boot with 3.5 in order to remove 3.8.2, despite an old and probably outdated message by Clement in this forum indicating so. I say fortunately, because I couldn't get my grub menu to pause or to respond when I pounded on the keys as the machine booted. I don't know what option I had missed in /etc/default/grub but in the end, it was not necessary...

My problem with the htpc involved the optical s/pdif audio. The htpc was rendered completely silent. Later somebody on my blog suggested I should have tried alsamixer to reconfig the audio, and he may be right about that, but at the time I was so flummoxxed by a silent htpc, which is a worthless htpc, that I just regressed to Linux kernel 3.5 automatically. Don't plan on any more such experiments any time soon. In fact I may not upgrade that htpc at all in the future. I kept reminding myself of the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Maybe I'll wait until the next version of XFCE, which is what my htpc runs.

Oh yeah, and this is funny--the day I installed 3.8.2 on my htpc was the same day 3.8.3 was released!

When you jump to a newer kernel version, some features and parameters are removed and some others are added if not revised or rewritten. Sometimes, these changes make the standard new kernel not compatible with all of your existing hardware unless you make some tweaks and recompile by yourself. It is up to you to review what has changed and if it is worth the change for your config. Some other times your will only have to wait for bugfixing or for the next newer kernel

For example, kernels 3.3, 3.4 and 3.6 didn't work correctly (at least) on my main configs, although 3.2, 3.5, 3.7 and now 3.8 did wonders.

Edit: don't forget either that you will have to recompile and reinstall any out-of-tree drivers (like network or GPU proprietary drivers) in order to make them work with a new kernel version.

eanfrid wrote:When you jump to a newer kernel version, some features and parameters are removed and some others are added if not revised or rewritten. Sometimes, these changes make the standard new kernel not compatible with all of your existing hardware unless you make some tweaks and recompile by yourself. It is up to you to review what has changed and if it is worth the change for your config. Some other times your will only have to wait for bugfixing or for the next newer kernel

For example, kernels 3.3, 3.4 and 3.6 didn't work correctly (at least) on my main configs, although 3.2, 3.5, 3.7 and now 3.8 did wonders.

Edit: don't forget either that you will have to recompile and reinstall any out-of-tree drivers (like network or GPU proprietary drivers) in order to make them work with a new kernel version.

I'm learnin'. I guess on my laptop I'm pure--that is, I'm using the generic drivers, nothing proprietary. I'm guilty of improprietary. So I didn't have any probs on my laptop. Still using it with 3.8.2 as a matter of fact even to type this message.

Upgraded to 3.8.3 because I'm affected of a weird bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1178324 I had in my old kernel. I hope I don't have this bug anymore.

Runs smoothly now, but I had to upgrade virtualbox to make it work 4.2.0 could'nt compile the kernel module in 3.8.3.

Keep an eye on bugfixes/security updates, 3.8.12 has just been baked out.

eanfrid wrote:Keep an eye on bugfixes/security updates, 3.8.12 has just been baked out.

Already? I heard about 3.8.11. I've decided to wait until the EOL of 3.8. Seems like there's a new release every week, and upgrading the kernel in Linux Mint through Ubuntu's kernel page is a cumbersome command-line affair. I don't think the hackers of the world are going to be breaking through my firewall anytime soon to hack my Linux boxes, they can wait a month or so until 3.8's EOL.

Kernel security fixes are very rare indeed but have a look there for 3.8.12 => http://lwn.net/Articles/549670/ (for example) and see if the bugfixes solve any kernel-related problem you could meet on your working configs. However the keywords of the kernel maintainer are "All users of the 3.8 kernel series must upgrade."

Until yesterday I kept 3.8.11 as a desktop fallback, since I already use 3.9.1 on my desktops.

eanfrid wrote:Kernel security fixes are very rare indeed but have a look there for 3.8.12 => http://lwn.net/Articles/549670/ (for example) and see if the bugfixes solve any kernel-related problem you could meet on your working configs. However the keywords of the kernel maintainer are "All users of the 3.8 kernel series must upgrade."

Until yesterday I kept 3.8.11 as a desktop fallback, since I already use 3.9.1 on my desktops.

You know, I read the release summaries for 3.9 and didn't see a thing for desktops other than improved SSD support, and I don't have an SSD. I don't see where the advantage is for 3.9. But 3.8 has some nifty little perks for desktops--I think a performance increase for ext4 and a few other things. With 3.9, there were a lot of changes to sound drivers, but it sounds to me like they are just optimizing the code for ease of future maintenance and eliminating obsolete code. They said the changes to the sound drivers was going to make things more "robust," which is the tip-off it's mainly for making the developer's job easier.

Yep except for one of my desktops I didn't really have to go to 3.9. The 3.8.x series is already a very good one.

eanfrid wrote:Yep except for one of my desktops I didn't really have to go to 3.9. The 3.8.x series is already a very good one.

Just installed the 3.8.13 [EOL] kernel in my htpc this afternoon from ubuntu's site. I think I'm going to keep her at 3.8.13 unless kernel 3.10 has something interesting. 3.9 as far as I can see is not very interesting unless you own SSD. One of the nice things about Linux is that it really doesn't need SSD like Windows does. Especially Linux Mint 14 Xfce, which boots up in 18 seconds or so on my htpc. I can't imagine it any faster than it is. If it were faster, I wouldn't be able to operate it. I'm the bottleneck in that system!

The 3.8.y kernel series will be maintained by Canonical (public announcement [*]) at least until RR comes to EOL. These kernels are already present in backports for LM13 (3.8.0-21 today = official 3.8.13), perhaps for LM14.

PS: I have SSDs as (boot+system+apps) drives on all my PCs and I would not revert to HDDs for this part.

[*] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Dev/ExtendedStable

eanfrid wrote:The 3.8.y kernel series will be maintained by Canonical (public announcement [*]) at least until RR comes to EOL. These kernels are already present in backports for LM13 (3.8.0-21 today = official 3.8.13), perhaps for LM14.

PS: I have SSDs as (boot+system+apps) drives on all my PCs and I would not revert to HDDs for this part.

[*] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Dev/ExtendedStable

Does Ubuntu backport relevant 3.9 bug fixes to RR's 3.8.y?

I was tempted to buy SSD's a couple months ago, and if I had disposable income, I might play around with them. Sure they are energy efficient, cooler, quieter, all good things, although one reads discouraging notes about reliability or strange performance glitches on certain brands--Intel seems to have a better rep, no surprise there. I see a lot of overpriced, used SSD's on E-bay and I wonder who is bold enough to buy them, and how much use they received prior to being placed on Ebay. I do need terabytes, though, not mere gigabytes, and for that reason, along with economics, Western Digital Green drives seem the optimal solution. The most demanding app my users ever run is Firefox, and the bottleneck there is not the hard drive. The bottleneck is the slow broadband connection.

Does Ubuntu backport relevant 3.9 bug fixes to RR's 3.8.y?

The is part of the role of a kernel maintainer, so yes.

For machines using a SSD, unless it is a netbook/laptop, it is still best to have at least one HDD dedicated to everyday data storage (/home and some other folders). I use 2x2TB HDDs in RAID1 for data on my desktop server and 4x1TB HDDs in RAID10 on my second server. So each of them has 2TB of real data storage and use 1 SSD for system and programs

As far as you avoid to write/rewrite a heavy load of data on a common consumer SSD (less than 10-15GB per day), its life expectancy is far superior to a HDD and is not a real concern.

Edit: I would never buy a used (?) SSD/HDD on Ebay or elsewhere. You can't test the hardware health before you buy and have no warranty.

eanfrid wrote:

Does Ubuntu backport relevant 3.9 bug fixes to RR's 3.8.y?

The is part of the role of a kernel maintainer, so yes.

Linux's kernel maintainer no longer backports anything from 3.9+ to 3.8, because it has reached EOL. So, Ubuntu has its own dedicated kernel maintainer?

eanfrid wrote:For machines using a SSD, unless it is a netbook/laptop, it is still best to have at least one HDD dedicated to everyday data storage (/home and some other folders). I use 2x2TB HDDs in RAID1 for data on my desktop server and 4x1TB HDDs in RAID10 on my second server. So each of them has 2TB of real data storage and use 1 SSD for system and programs

As far as you avoid to write/rewrite a heavy load of data on a common consumer SSD (less than 10-15GB per day), its life expectancy is far superior to a HDD and is not a real concern.

Edit: I would never buy a used (?) SSD/HDD on Ebay or elsewhere. You can't test the hardware health before you buy and have no warranty.

I've bought used hard drives from NewEgg and sellers on Amazon without any problems and at least a 30% discount. It's a chance one takes when money is a concern. I think almost all of my drives are used. There is a limited period during which one can make a return, which is also true of Ebay. One checks S.M.A.R.T. using a disk utility, and if the drive passes then most likely all is well. I don't know how one checks an SSD drive. I've sold at least a dozen drives on Ebay, and received positive feedback from all of the buyers because my used drives are perfectly okay. In fact, I have a 100% positive feedback rating after thirteen years on Ebay and many hundreds of sales. The golden rule makes a lot of business sense, as it turns out. The only reason I sell old drives is to be "out with the old, in with the new," especially when the new has much more storage space. I make somebody happy who needs my drive, and make myself happy by getting more storage space from a newer (not necessarily new) drive.

I use 5,400 rpm Green hard drives not only as multimedia storage, but also as boot drives and to store programs and the operating system. All my Linux systems boot in less than half a minute, and programs load fast, so speed is a non-issue really. One of the nice things about Linux is that most users won't need SSD at all. I think of it as a luxury item, a nice thing if you've got the money, like a BMW or Mercedes.

For 3.8 kernel matters, check here => http://lwn.net/Articles/550581/