Linux-latest still on 5.10 , why?

That doesn’t make any sense. Personally I’m on rcX kernels anyways. I don’t need / want this package for myself at all.

The point is if it makes sense for Manjaro to offer (and maintain) it to the users. And if so, should it be installed by default or not. For the average user it can make sense to force kernel updates upon them (a lot of users don’t seem to care or even know they should switch kernels at some point when they go eol).

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the thing here is that you can pick the way to want, you are not forced to do that way. So be in favour of removing an option because you don’t use it… it’s not empathic. To sum up, you are not forced to continue with a kernel because a metapackage is there. You can install it or not.

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I think yes, it’s the way to go. But totally apart from this the discussion is on WHY to deprecate this for all users, not like default.
Linux.lts and linux latest are the way to go to unexperienced users IMO. But ifyou are not " agree" with me you can always have this not by default but like an option. Not deprecating this

That’s probably a misunderstanding here.
I personally don’t use that package, yes. But that was not the reason why I initially felt that the removal of that package is the right decision. My reasoning was that it may lead to some issues where the (newcomer) user does not even know that the kernel rollover is happening automatically (At some point linux-latest was part of the default installation / ISO-profile I think). So for them, in case they have issues with a new kernel series, they might not even know what happened. Whereas if they would have switched manually via MSM, it should be pretty obvious.

But again, after some thinking, I tend towards having linux-latest/lts, even as default.

Well, let’s see. Maybe there are still some comments from the manjaro team.

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okey, I read it after publishing my comment, I tend to install latest kernels manually but I had too the linux-latest and linux-lts for the case I don’t want to do it…
And for my friends or girlfriend that they don’t know about kernel versioning… i always installed Linux-lts and linux-latest. so…

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Yeah, I was rather puzzled as I installed the linux-latest metapackage when it was released, so that I didn’t need to manage kernel versions manually… and thought it was an excellent idea… latest if you want to have the latest, and lts if you want to stick on the ‘should always just work’ track…

Whilst it is just a matter of updating the PKGBUILD when there is a kernel update… I can appreciate that on top of all the the other justs that it would have been given the chop. I still want it, but I can understand the move if it was workload related.

Someone has to maintain and update the metapackage, right? If no one in the Manjaro team feels it’s a key thing nor something Manjaro should encourage, then it’s not going to happen.

As for my use case, I would prefer not to depend on linux-lts metapackage. I want to CHOOSE the particular LTS kernel I’m running. I always stay with the older LTS kernel for 6 months to a year before I install the new one to try (carefully). I’m now on 5.4 kernel, and I only just switched a few months ago. I was on 4.19 the longest time. I don’t foresee switching to 5.10 for some time more.

Why? I have 6-7 year old hardware which I don’t expect to change for some time. I fail to see the need to change kernel if the old one is working fine. I want to make my own choice when to install the latest lts, if at all.

PS. Manjaro and MX are my workhorses, and I keep them as conservative as possible. I have other distros that were installed more for fun and interest, eg Void, Fedora and Anarchy (I stick to linux-lts in Anarchy). Those distros change kernels really quickly every update, and I usually check out and observe how those kernels do for some time before I make kernel decisions in Manjaro and MX. I can tell you for instance that Fedora 5.10 and 5.11 kernels have been inconsistent for me. A new version may work after an update and reboot, or it may not and I have to fall back to the previous working kernel. So far Arch 5.10 lts is ok, but even then, I’m staying with 5.4 in Manjaro for now.

Hopefully this thread demonstrates that this feature was deemed useful for some at least.
I understand that a good part of the community wants to choose their kernel manually (that’s a specific feature of Manjaro after all), but this part is not every user.

The question I asked when I resurfaced this thread was why.
Why were the meta-packages dropped?

At first, difficulty doesn’t appear to be the issue; if there is difficulty, please explain.
The reason may come down to the package being inherently a bad idea, but considering most distributions don’t let their users much freedom in the kernel they use, I can’t see why this would be the case for Manjaro; if the metapackages are a bad idea after all, please explain.

If neither of those are the main reason, then what is it?
This feature apparently has users, seems fairly easy to maintain, and doesn’t look like a bad idea.

The update of the package can be automated, so it requires little or no maintenance whatsoever:

#! /bin/bash

pkgname="linux"
pkgdesc="Automatically updates the linux package on Manjaro"

pkgrel=1
arch=("any")
url="https://gitlab.manjaro.org/search?search=linux&group_id=19"


# shellcheck disable=SC2021
pkgver () {
	curl --silent "https://gitlab.manjaro.org/api/v4/groups/19" |
	tr '[{,}]' '\n' |
	grep 'path_with_namespace' |
	grep 'linux' |
	head -n2 |
	tail -n1 |
	cut --delimiter='"' --fields=4 |
	cut --delimiter='x' --fields=2
}


pkgver="$(pkgver)"
depends=("linux${pkgver}")

The question is who is going to publish this. I can’t myself cause I’m banned in the AUR (for good), and my own repository must build on Arch Linux.

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