XXXVirtualBox:~$ uname -a Linux XXX-VirtualBox 6.8.0-60-generic #63-Ubuntu Seems like that is way behind Mint/Ubuntu! Am I missing something?
I am not a Linux user, but a quick search shows the current Ubuntu LTS 24.04 and Linux Mint 22 kernel to be 6.8, while this new release from Linus Torvalds is version 6.15. So Ubuntu/Mint are using an older Kernel.
Yes, Ubuntu is not a rolling release distro but maintains its own kernel where security fixes and other critical fixes are backported. The 6.8 kernel in Ubuntu 24.04 is supported until April 2029. However, it's possible to enable the Ubuntu LTS enablement, or Hardware Enablement (HWE), stack which provides newer kernels including newer X11 stack and mesa versions. The current HWE kernel is 6.14 which is supported until July 2025 when it will be replaced by a newer kernel. If you want a distro with always the newest kernel (and generally uptodate packages) I suggest a rolling distro like Arch Linux. That's what I'm using.
Rolling distros have a tendency to break things on production machines. But then on the other end there is Debian slow. Mint 22.x seems to be a good balance for me. Just saying.
