this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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Hi! This is a bit of a newbie question, so please bear with me.

I purchased a laptop that has a specific hardware issue under Linux (the keyboard does not function). A patch fixing the issue was approved for 6.8 and incorporated in the "stable tree" of older kernels: 5.4, 5.10, 5.15, 6.6, 6.7, etc.

My question is: Do distros ship with an updated kernel that incorporates all the patches? Or does the user need to update after installation for the patches to be applied? I imagine that it may perhaps vary from distro to distro, but I honestly don't know.

The question is relevant for me because, potentially, I would have to install the actual distro and update, rather than just try out a live version.

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[–] fkn@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Have LTS kernels started backporting non security fixes like this? To be fair I haven't looked at this in over a decade but this kind of patch wouldn't have been backported then.

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 months ago

Well, OP explicitly states that the patch for their issue has been incorporated into the stable trees for various older kernels.