Apparent kernel bug creeping into various distros
  • revlchurchrevlchurch
    PMPosts: 6
    I don't know if this has happened yet in LXLE but on various computers with different graphics hardware, upon upgrading the kernel to anything above 3.14.13 an instability seems to occur causing the video backlight on laptops or the brightness levels on stand alone monitors to fluctuate every two or three seconds causing the display to have an annoying flash.  I've read about it occurring with everything from intel to amd chipsets and on various systems and distros.  I'm hoping it doesn't hit LXLE because this has been the best system I have found for some of my older units that still have a bunch more life in them.
    Thanked by 1lxle
  • RobinRobin
    PMPosts: 24
    I wonder why there are so many kernel updates anyway.... If it ain't broke (which it ain't), why keep fixing it?  And if I set it up to use only the present kernel and stop "upgrading / improving" it, will that mess up other stuff on my system?  Kernel updates scare the hell out of me, since I've seen perfectly good working systems ruined by some "improvement" to a newer (and therefore better somehow) kernel. I'm like "Daaaay-umm, dude!  It was working! What'djya mess with it for?" Linux does this all the time, and I've never understood why.

  • revlchurchrevlchurch
    PMPosts: 6
    Automatic updates updated the kernel in a security update.... had to manually downgrade the kernel back down and lock it into grub till this problem gets corrected upstream.  it appears the kernel group don't see this as a problem since it mainly effects older hardware but that is sort of the niche for LXLE.
  • lxlelxle
    PMPosts: 2,656
    kernels don't upgrade automatically they simply get bug fixes, in other words if your kernel was 3.2  then an update may come in at 3.2-whatever but never will it go from 3.2 to 3.4 on its own, if it did it was something you installed that forced it to happen.
  • revlchurchrevlchurch
    PMPosts: 6
    Indeed it was a particular program I use.  It was custom coded at a previous job I did and I still find it useful on occasions but it will absolutely not run on the 3.2 kernel.  I have just automatically installed it everytime I install a new distro, becoming one of my default configurations, but still the overall problem remains with the kernel.  At some point programs will no longer function under the 3.2 and at that time this 'feature' will have become set in stone because upstream seems not to care about the less than modern equipment distros such as lxle are designed for.
  • lxlelxle
    PMPosts: 2,656
    move on to the 64bit version then, the 3.2 kernel is only kept in the 32bit release.
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