What would be the impact of only supporting maintained linux kernels just like for other OSes ?

[Jorropo]

In https://github.com/golang/go/issues/72866#issuecomment-2725029549 thanm raise a good point about fixing bugs in old unmaintained kernels.

My understanding is that for windows and darwin, when the upstream (microsoft and apple respectively) drop support we shortly follow.

Applying a similar logic to linux, shouldn't we require a minimum linux version of 5.4.291 (see https://endoflife.date/linux) ?

I guess the main pain points could be:

- Many devices run outdated linux, particularly in the embedded world.

- Thx to FOSS EOL doesn't prevent a third party to continue maintaining their own old branch of linux altho note that in 72866 they are very behind the last release on the 4.19 branch.

[t hepudds]

Hi Jorropo,

You've probably seen this, but for reference, some related discussion from ~May of last year:
    https://github.com/golang/go/issues/67001

Some of that discussion I think was related to the crypto/rand proposal about crashing if there's an error reading random data from the crypto backend:
    https://github.com/golang/go/issues/66821

And a slightly older discussion that also touches on some of the considerations:
    https://github.com/golang/go/issues/45964

Maybe there are better references to prior discussions, but in short, I think Linux is a little more fragmented than Windows and macOS.

Best regards,
--thepudds

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[Michael Pratt]

On Darwin and Windows, users get their kernel directly from the kernel developer (because the kernel and OS developer are the same). On Linux, almost all users get their kernel from the OS distribution developer (Debian, Red Hat, etc), which is distinct from the Linux kernel project.

Thus, I don't think it is correct to look at the kernel support policy only from the Linux kernel project, but also from the distribution maintainers. https://go.dev/issue/67001#issuecomment-2075854975 has a brief summary from last year. When a distribution chooses to support a kernel beyond upstream EOL they take on a lot of extra work in backporting fixes, but projects do commonly do that. Personally, I think we need to meet users where they are and support versions if they continue to have significant usage.

Regarding https://go.dev/issue/72866 specifically, it is not clear to me if that is an issue with every 4.19 kernel, or some change made by this vendor. I don't think we are responsible for working around every bug that vendors introduce in their kernels, particularly if usage is low.

On Fri, Mar 14, 2025 at 1:39 PM Jorropo <jorro...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Jorropo]

I see thx, about 72866 I've asked the original reporter to reply on the issue.

And another thing is that even relative to the 4.19 branch they are running a very outdated kernel.