On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 10:15 AM, Keith Smith <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Jamie - Thank you.
>
> My reason for asking is that 7.10 'expires' in Sept 2015. I know the
> Linux kernel doesn't disappear like a jini on September 30, 2015, but
> there are several long term stable versions that are much newer than
> 7.10.
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 9:14 AM, Jamie Duncan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> One with a lot of backports, yes.
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Aug 30, 2015, 9:05 AM Keith Smith <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Am I correct that Scientific Linux 7.1 has 3.10 as its version of the
>>> Linux kernel?
>>>
>>>
>>> Keith Smith

Pursuing "the latest kernel" is not good for system stability. It's
useful if you're chasing the latest drivers or features. But when it
also has to integrate with video features, sound, RAID controllers,
filesystems, user privileges, etc., etc. it's very useful to have a
stabilized, upstream supported version. That's why Red Hat  publishes
stable RHEL releases and supports them for 10 years, and why groups
like CentOS and Scientific Linux do free rebuilds of those stable,
tested systems, to make them more available. It's a nicely symbiotic
relationship. We get solid software, Red Hat gets a lot of testing and
patches they'd have to pay for and develop in-house and wouldn't have
time for, and some of us aren't bound by weird software patent
licensing or encryption export regulations because some of us aren't
in the US.

If you really need a more recent kernel on an SL 7 system, you can
certainly test the Fedora kernels or even test with the current Fedora
releases to get bleeding edge versions of *everything*. Do test them
in virtualization first, to avoid breaking a live hardware based
system!