107% agree with you, but: The Big-unn paying distros (in particular Red Hat and Android) do not use LTS kernels as their main kernels (although they give said kernels as options), let alone use CIP kernels (supported for 10 years).

I wish they did, but they do not. Why? I suspect it is more of "when we started development of the next version this was the 1st kernel that had everythig we needed" and less of "Let's NOT use an LTS kernel so that customers depend on us for backporting and patches".

6.12 was selected by the Linux Civin Ifrastructure Platform (CIP) to have a "Super LTS", accepting Limited patches for 10 years.

The fact that G.H-K will support it as LTS for 4 years means more time with "propper" patches and less time the CIP has to do the work with less funding and limited patches.

Many projects (most notably OpenWRT) use only CIP Kernels.

If I were a smallish distro, with limited number of voluntaires, I'd Aim to use CIP kernels in General, and 6.12 in particular, even If the project does not do LTSs.

YMTC does not produce RAM, yet. It will produce RAM in the future, probably in 2027 when the fab you allude to comes online.

They are a very fine purveryor of NAND Flash for storage.

I do not know why it was removed from linux. But the same phenomena happened on Windows. I do not remeber if it was on Vista or 7, but around that timeframe. Which makes me suspect there is a technical reason behind doing it.

I guess it has something to do with 3D-rendered Desktop environments not being able to leverage said functions.

At around PCIe5, the speeds were so big, that Datacenter came first, consumer came (much) latter, and that gulf will only widen. Think of the datacenter as paying the early adoper tax for these technologies.

And by the way, When they released the PCIe 6 spec all those years ago, the PCIe-SIG knew full well that consumer boards with PCIe6 would come at the end of the decade. The president of the PCIe Sig said as much in interviews at the time.

Read TFS. These PCIe 6 SSDs were never designed for consumers. More so, ever since PCIe 6 Spec was Released in 2022~2023, the PCI-SIG knew that it would be datacenter only ontil the latests part of the decade... And clearly communicated that.

The bumps for bonding the controller chip to the PCIe bus take significant silicon area, worth hundreds of logic transistors. The (analog) transistors driving the PCIe pins take silicon area worth hundreds of logic transistors.

Minimizing the ammount of pins dedicated to buses, be it memory in VideoCards or CPUs, or PCIe in expansion cards drives massive savings in chip production.

That's why consumers get 2 channel (4 dimm 128 Bit) memory, while servers get 4 channel (8 Dimm 256bit) Buses. That's why nVIDIA Blackwell for datacenter has a 8192-bit memory bus while nVIDIA blackwell for consumers has 128-512 mem buses...

And that's also why SSDs are going to PCIe Gen 6 x4 instead of PCIE Gen5x8

Also, bear in mind that Mobo standard sizes have phisical limits on the ammount of traces that can be dedicated to PCIe Lines and slots (i.e. mobo space is not infinite), therefore, for serves, It makes sense that as amny as your lanes are as fast as possible

Until the advent of CAMM2 (and the inminent advent of SO-CAMM2) the only way to have LP-DDR4 or LP-DDR5 was to solder it to the mobo, as per JEDEC Spec. If the Laptop had SO-DIMM, it used DRR4 or DDR5, which consumes more power AND generates more heat, not ideal for Laptops, Tablets or Phones.

So Apple integrating the memory in the same organic substrateas the processor was not forward thinking, but rather, something dictated by JEDEC, product requirements and economies of scale

For the last year and pocket change, I've been giving away 32Bit only Laptops with Linux. Mostly to my Venezuelan country-folk and cuban visitors. I settled for Mageia for "Upper end" 32bit machines (think Intel T2080 or similar ilk) and AntiX Linux for lower end Machines (Think P4 or P3).

Both will be supported until 2028 at the very least.

Yes, one could install Win10 IoT on the T2080 types (and the P4 and P3 only get to Win7 POSReady Tops) and get done with it. But it is slower, and the license is a grey area I do not want to get into. If the recipient wants to erase linux and Install Win7 POSReady or Win10 IoT, is their choice, and the will bear the consequences.

But Even on 64 bit capable machines, the linux kernel went from AMD64 V1 to V2, and some linux distros demand V3*. So, some hardware is inevitably left behind, Just like Win11 left behind machines without MBEC**

All OSes leave behind hardware after a while. Is the nature of things.

* Mr. Torvals behemently opposes the V1, V2 and V3 designations.
** The real reason Win11 left behind 7th gen intel and lower was lack of MBEC and/or lack of intel commitment for drivers and microcode updates. For details, see my post here:
https://arstechnica.com/civis/...

1.) Even Linux Distros have "Arbitrary support dates". I guess there are not too many distros that will support a version released in 2021 beyond 2032 without making you go to the next version of the distro, with newer kernel (which may or may not work in your equipment), new builds of the Apps (which again may or may not work in your equipment), and potentially a new UI (as your desktop/window manager and aps may have evolved their UIs in the interim)...

2.) In the end, and OS is a means to run Apps. As the old adage says, the job of the OS is to allow you to run your apps and be unobstrisive/invisible. If the Apps you want/need/have to run are not in Linux, Linux will do you no good. This is not a reflection on how good is Linux technically (I use it extensively in servers, when I refurbish machines for donations, and in specialty cases like TAILS and Kali VMs), just a reflection that the fundamental job of the OS is to run Apps, and the Apps you want/need/have to use need to be available in said OS.

Problem with "old-ish"second hand laptops is that, for the most part, the memory and SSD, while adequate for the laptop's release date, is insuficient for the needs of today, and sourcing Memory and SSD upgrades for an old Laptop is prohibitive in the current climate, even taking into account the savings in the rest of the laptop by going used.

At this point, by sheer volume, HP, Dell, and Lenovo will secure better prices on the RAM and SSD than you, or a refurbisher/recycler. Of course, if you find a used Laptop with the excat configuration you need, for a low price, more power to you.

This is in large part due to regulatory commintments when they bought Zenimax and later Activision-Blizzard... as those comitments start to fade away, expect Microsoft to revert to XBox/Windows timed exclusives...

At that point, it does not make sense to Release the base model with 2 years of delay (2029). Just release the PS6 Pro model (that they must be also planing right now) as the base model, and have that for the life of the console...

No drama, no Fuss, more performance, more reason for developers to target the PS5 Pro + PS6 (accelerating the move away from PS5 base), or to move to PS6 exclusively due to the delta in performance.

Bought in 1996. At the time, I had 14Kbps @ home, and less at the uni (The uni had a 64K link, shared amongst all the uni, you "cron-ed" your FTPs at night). Just the CD with slackware alone was worth the cost of admision

Having said that, if this is true:

Then the distro mantainers (Volkerig et al) are doing something wrong. You only need to test the LTS releases and the SLTS (supported by the Linux civil infrastructure project) releases.

For a distro as Small as Slackware, and which also does not depend on any other distro (like ubuntu depends on Debian, and mint depends on Ubuntu), is madness to test anything more kernel-wise.

PS: LTSs get support for 2~3 years, SLTSs are a subset of LTSs that get support for 10 years (limited support after the LTS period ends)

Talk to your doctor about Vardenafil. The intensity of side-effects is much lower than with Sildenafil or Tadalafil.