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atenz
Asked: 2012-07-08 07:53:59 +0800 CST

Is it relatively safe to install kernel from "Canonical Kernel Team ppa" than "Mainline"

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I already referred most of the questions stating Upgrade from Mainline Builds or Compiling from latest source or PPA and also concluded that it can cause breakage to Current stable installed system.

My question is regarding the kernel builds from Canonical Kernel Team which i have subscribed in Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit , states

This is the core kernel team as hired by Canonical. Do not use this team, use ubuntu-kernel-team instead.

My stable kernel states 3.2.0-27.42 from Ubuntu repository , also i consider Canonical Kernel Team to be Official ,currently urging me to Upgrade 3.2.0-27.43 , so from the Odd numbered and through the PPA description it is categorized as Unstable. From this ,it can be said next stable release would be 3.2.0-27.44.

Is upgrading to .43 version is stable enough to continue , since .44 will be provide by Ubuntu itself based on .43 version and so on.

Though i can't expect a lot of Changes ,but does it provide new Improvements or just Bug Fixes since it is just a preceding Release.

Also , apart from Ubuntu mainline kernel , is Canonical Kernel Team different. If so , in what development or contribution terms.

Is the Ubuntu kernel developed by Two different teams or same team.

P.S.: Just noticed that sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade provides me upgrade to .43 kernel , which normally requires sudo apt-get dist-upgrade to upgrade to newer kernel available , unless it normally provides message like " Following packages were not upgraded..." , is it an error or an exception to this Canonical Kernel PPA.

enter image description here

Heres the apt-config dump

kernel

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer
    • The "core" Linux kernel is developed by Linus Torvalds and the "Linux Team" (lots and lots of developers, many of whom are employed by different companies).
      • Canonical Kernel Team consists of those core developers who are employed by Canonical
    • The Ubuntu kernel team does not work on the core kernel, but instead customizes and builds them for Ubuntu, i.e. they turn Linux kernels into "Ubuntu kernels"
      • They also provide mainline (i.e. "core", uncustomized) kernel builds as a courtesy, for debugging purposes only.
    • If you really want to try advanced kernel builds, the safest is the Ubuntu kernel-team's pre-proposed PPA (ppa:kernel-ppa/pre-proposed), which is not a mainline build and should soon find its way into a regular update.
      • The Canonical kernel team PPA is semi-private, and shouldn't really be subscribed to by normal users: 
        This ppa is used for building pre-release and test kernels. 
        
It IS NOT RECOMMENDED that you subscribe to this PPA.

    Typically the kernels for an LTS release (and otherwise) will contain just bugfixes and minor improvements, no radical new features (e.g. btrfs, etc.).

    P.S.: Based on your screenshot, this appears to be an exception for the Canonical Team ppa. After all it's meant for internal developer use only...

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