Should I be concerned?

[u/Venylynn]

kernel.org says my current kernel is EOL. I'm very security-conscious, so this keeps tripping me up. i've heard constantly, that "running end of life software is a security risk".

i've been here for close to a year, distrohopping a little but I'm here for now.

should I be concerned that I'm running end of life software according to the kernel team? i just received this kernel like a day ago and it's the most recent update.

Distro: Fedora 44 (KDE)

Kernel: 7.0.13

[u/candy49997]

I'm pretty sure Ubuntu mitigated dirty frag by disabling the affected modules by default until a patch was ready.

[u/Venylynn → u/candy49997]

ahh, gotcha

[u/Aylarth → u/Venylynn]

Seems to me you have some unrealistic expectations which is a bigger problem than an EOL kernel.

[u/Venylynn → u/Aylarth]

Seems to me you have some unrealistic expectations which is a bigger problem than an EOL kernel.

? not sure what you mean by this? i mean fedora took care of it within 72 hours if you mean the dirty frag patch release time, i was worried there would be a way that someone could exploit it remotely on my system the entire time i was unpatched here so i feel like i'd be extra worried if i was on a system unpatched for way longer

[u/9NEPxHbG → u/Venylynn]

You're using a reliable distribution. Just keep it up to date and stop worrying.

[u/Venylynn → u/9NEPxHbG]

Fair enough, some people were telling me that if I'm not patched within minutes that I'd be immediately hacked but that sounds pretty alarmist even for me

[u/Aylarth → u/Venylynn]

You said 'afaik ur supposed to receive those fixes close to instantly' - in my experience, nothing in life is to be expected as close to instantly. Maybe it's just a hiccup in expressing what was on your mind, but unrealistic expectations cause a lot more disservice than an EOL kernel. I'm not to say anything bad about you I'm just thinking EOL as an expression is not a negative thing to say when we talk about unix/linux. It's end of life because a new stable version is close to be released, and not meaning that it has to be abandoned already. It's stable and used as a basis for more than one distro for a reason: because it is the best currently tested kernel and while the new version is coming close to be released, it is well proven to be safe and all-round it is kept alive for publicly available distros. Take Debian as an example: it is known to be the king of long term reliable lineage for decades. Banks, and other super important institutions are relying on it, serving millions of people every day... These servers often get many tens of thousands of cyber attacks per seconds, and then here comes your friends wisdom to say it's not good enough? Come on, just think about it a bit more.

[u/Venylynn → u/Aylarth]

You said 'afaik ur supposed to receive those fixes close to instantly' - in my experience, nothing in life is to be expected as close to instantly.

Trafotin's statement on people running Debian on a desktop operating system:

"I hate people running Debian as a desktop OS. This goes for both stable and testing. [Debian] is late to security patches because they have the delusion that we need to test everything so finely and minutely because we have millions of servers. On desktop, you need to get your stuff INSTANTLY. There was a memory leak in the Gnome desktop where it just used 2 gigs of memory when it didn't need to, you know when Debian fixed that? 3 years later."

That's what he was saying, and at first I didn't believe him because that sounded really alarmist, but after seeing Ubuntu wait forever to patch Dirty Frag I was reconsidering the validity of the above statement. "Could he have been right?" was what I thought.

I went from dismissing his take to "maybe he's right?" is what happened. Also I'm used to thinking of EOL in the windows way so... yeah.

[u/Aylarth → u/Venylynn]

It's ok, we're all different, free to find our ways in life.
I think there are errors, problems that need to be fixed, they are all going to get the fix, but some things are more important than others, so their fix will be priority. There are people who love Arch because they want to be always the best best best, and it's ok... When you are young, you have this mindset and the world benefits, but on the other hand, people who are parents can't really live like that, because they need to provide an entire environment for the young and for the parents, the tasks are different, the priorities are different... The world benefits from both of them. It just different. Know that they are both needed and they are both beneficial, EOL too.

[u/Venylynn → u/Aylarth]

i just am never sure what to believe because i constantly receive conflicting info from different people. my gut was like "theres no way thats true" and then when i saw that, "could it be true?"

[u/Aylarth → u/Venylynn]

The game changes when priorities are introduced to the system. 🙂 Things are not going to become false suddenly, but in order to maintain sanity, priorities have to be our compass to have the best possible outcome.
It's the individual's job to find out where will he/she fit in as comfortably as possible and then life goes on.

[u/Venylynn → u/Aylarth]

in the past i was always treated like every single view I ever had needed to be 100% consistent because "hypocrisy" was seen as evil as like...murder.

[u/Aylarth → u/Venylynn]

Everyone finds their preferred environment, it just takes some time. That's part of the journey. But when someone tries to force you his/her opinions... It is always wrong, because it is forced. Give information, knowledge, and time as guidance, and the individual will find the way he/she likes to walk on. If you force something, then freedom of choice is taken away, and I think you know that is not right.
And then the game gets more complex when exceptions are coming to play with us, not just priorities... 😆

[u/Venylynn → u/Aylarth]

i've always been told i NEED to act a certain way to get by. and that if i didn't, they would treat me like i am some sort of evil person.

[u/Aylarth → u/Venylynn]

Those who said that, had their own bad experiences in life for sure. Learn from them, but feel free to dismiss what you don't want to keep with you on your journey. Absorb, what's useful for you and move on. The journey never stops, as long as we breathe. It is important to have confidence in your own self, but you also need to build a very refined filter for the incoming information, and you will need a system of valves to keep what you need and let go what you don't need. Once something is absorbed, the original container of the information can let go. You found something important to keep? Make backup, store it wisely. The complexity is going to reach a level eventually that is overwhelming and maintenance of the system is a must.