zlacker

My main issue with my current laptop is that the synopsis touchpads connect over i2c, and there has been a lot of ongoing work in the kernel that keeps requiring me to change my kernel config (PINCTRL_AMD needing to be selected for the 5.18 to 5.19 kernel update).

My last laptop (an AMD version of the HP Envy 13) was also rough at the beginning. A BIOS update updated the AMD GPU firmware or microcode or something and broke compatibility with the current kernel stable kernel at the time. Had to switch to an -rc kernel to get video to work.

Admittedly, my day job is basically Linux kernel development so I'm intimately familiar with most of this stuff. Not exactly your typical user.

>>Teknom+(OP)
I was going to cry foul since 5.18 and 5.19 aren't considered "stable" by most maintainers, but you mentioned that you do kernel dev, so it makes sense. 5.15 is "stable", at least on gentoo.

>>genewi+3z4
> I was going to cry foul since 5.18 and 5.19 aren't considered "stable" by most maintainers

Distro maintainers certainly, unless you're Gentoo, Arch, or one of the other mostly-bleeding-edge rolling release distros. The "stable" kernel is whatever the current release is and "longterm" kernels are typically the last major kernel version released in a given year.

https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html

Most distributions pick whatever the latest longterm kernel is when they cut releases. Sometimes they don't and things get strange, such as when Canonical chose kernel 4.15 for Ubuntu 18.04, requiring them to maintain an unsupported kernel themselves. IIRC that was because a bunch of AMD CPU and GPU support was added in 4.15.