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Originally Posted by win32sux
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Hmmm. Perhaps it was because this vulnerability was such a high profile one (owing to it's age it got quite a lot of coverage on tech sites) and there was also example exploit code available.
As I said, I don't fully understand the criteria Pat uses, but it's nice to see a new official slackware kernel for 12.2 all the same. The previous one was getting a little long in the tooth.
@bloodsugar,
The 2.6.27 kernel is designated as a 'longtime supported kernel'. It's sort of an unofficially official 'extra-stable' kernel for people who want bug fixes but not new features. The longtime kernels continue to get bug-fixes after support for that version would have normally stopped.
The theory is that new features can introduce incompatibilities or new bugs, so by only applying bug-fixes, the longtime kernels will be more of a known quantity (i.e. be more stable - in the non-changing sense of the word) and arguably should also be more reliable.
I believe 2.6.16 was the first one they started to do this for, and came about as a result of changes to the kernel development model when they abandoned the idea of having both development and stable kernel releases.