Linux kernel 6.1 or 6.6 for OpenWrt 24.x release?

[Felix Baumann]

Am 3. Februar 2024 19:54:12 MEZ schrieb Enrico Mioso <mrkiko.rs at gmail.com>:
>Hello all,
>
>I would choose 6.1: to get more time for some things to stabilize out and because I am under the impression the kernel size is growing too fast and so we are accelerating hw obsolescence.
>The 6.1 kernel has also been choosen by the Civil Infrastructure Platform, so it would get some attention and maintenance still.

OpenWrt only releases updates for two years after release. The project doesn't profit from super long term support.

>However, my preference / decision is for 6.6 in the end: especially after having felt the pain of developers who need to backport lots of stuff and for which the challenge becomes harder over time.
>If we need more developers, making development less annoying is preferrable.
>That said, it would be nice to enable only the needed kernel features for a subtarget, just to incrase efficiency in general.
>
>Enrico
>
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That kind of depends on how you define the minimum 😅
I don't consider OpenWrt bloated. Sure you can go the extra mile to thin down the kernel further but that should be left to people doing their own builds anyways. Though this going offtopic

I'm curious when OpenWrt will loose devices with 6MiB of available space.
For the ones with 7MiB (close to 8MiB) I don't expect kernel 6.6 being too large, so hw isn't moving into obsolescence any faster. Sure the next LTS Kernel afterwards might arrive a bit faster but that's a very positive thing for most devices so they get the best kernels during their expected lifetime.

Regards
Felix Baumann