Fedora Kernel development versions

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1

Hey everybody, I just had a quick question about what each of the development versions of the kernel mean. I’ve seen package names on bodhi like kernel-6.8.9-300.fc40 which means it’s the 6.8.9 kernel for fedora 40. Which makes sense. The ones I’m confused about are ones like
“kernel-6.9.0-0.rc7.20240510git448b3fe5a0ea.62.eln136” what does rc7 mean? And how long does it take before we get a candidate for an official release.

I ask because I’ve found problems with the current 6.8.9 kernel with my games crashing, and I want to know how long it’ll be before a new kernel comes out.

Thanks!

2

RC means Release Candidate.
These are released by linux kernel upstream during the development of the next kernel release so that changes can be tested before the final release.

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3

That depends entirely upon the upstream developers and testing results.
No firm timeline can be assigned.

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4

You can look here to see the progress in building kernels: kernel | Package Info | koji

I see that 6.9.0 has been built for rawhide but nothing else yet.
I assume that they are testing still.

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5

Thank you, I had no idea about this site. Very helpful. So do packages get built on the build system and then the builder submits them to the update system for testing before they’re uploaded to the stable repos?

6

Yes that about it with one gate. When a developer pushes a build for release it must wait to collect enough positive karma and can get negative karma from testing. After 2 week, typically, the build if all is good with go into the repos.

See https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/ where the Karma is tracked.

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7

Oh sweet! And it looks like the new 6.8.10 kernel just got submitted for testing. Thanks for all the info. I’m still a little new with how the update process works on fedora. I really like how structured it all is though.

8

When I want a really new kernel, what I do is:

sudo dnf install koji (if not installed)
go to URL kernel | Package Info | koji
find the newest kernel in the version range I want that has a green ‘state’ checkmark
take the version string for that, and run in an empty folder:

koji download-build --arch=x86_64 <version string here>
(Example: koji download-build --arch=x86_64 kernel-6.10.0-0.rc0.20240516git3c999d1ae3c7.5.fc41 )

remove all the packages not critical (remove perf*, *debug*, rv*, kernel-tool*, kernel-uki*, …)

install those: sudo dnf upgrade kernel*rpm

Currently I’ve done that and I’m running with 6.10.0-0.rc0.20240516git3c999d1ae3c7.5.fc41 on Fedora 40 and it’s working very well. That’s on an AMD laptop so I don’t have to deal with building the closed driver on such a new kernel. Even nicer is that the koji kernels seem to be pre-signed so they even work on Secure Boot systems.

# mokutil --sb-state
SecureBoot enabled
# uname -r
6.10.0-0.rc0.20240516git3c999d1ae3c7.5.fc41.x86_64

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