I have always wondered what experts in Slackware do with kernel of same major release (i.e 4.4 or 4.14)when a patch is released. Specifically is it better to rebuild the kernel patch release(ex 4.4.138 to 4.4.139) or to apply the patch to the main kernel? Example DL the kernel 4.4.140 or DL the patch (or inc. patch) and apply?

I have always rebuilt the kernel using AlienBob's Kernel Building Tutorial on Slackdocs. But can one skip all the steps; like make bzImage modules, make modules_install, system map, then modifying lilo; and simply apply the patch? I suspect not, that the patch is only applied to the source files in /usr/src/linux, and one must then still make bzImage modules, make modules, symlink the system.map and fix lilo, because nothing will be changed in /boot.

Confirmation of my conclusion is appreciated. Cheers, BrianA_MN

it only patches the source. You will still need to build the binary

Thanks.
I'll simply continue to download the whole minor release and then build from it as AlienBob's tutorial suggests. Cheers, BrianA_MN

Are you talking about live patching? I've never tried it, but it sounds interesting. I always just build a new kernel from source and reboot.

Here is some info from Arch Linux about it:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php..._live_patching

Incremental patches bump the minor release and are [almost always] much more efficient because of their relative size and how the kernel makefile works: