For people wanting to install Linux Mint on newer devices, the Linux Mint team have announced a plan to update their EDGE ISOs with a later Linux kernel in the latest blog post.
The blog post goes over recent funding, of which December 2023 was a high-point and the most they've seen donated to the project all year at $24,146 USD but still just below last year's level.
Giving an update on the status of the upcoming Linux Mint 21.3 release, the Beta phase sounds like it's going well with 50 bug reports being sent in and 35 of them already closed. Linux Mint Debian Edition 6 will also be getting all the improvements from the main Linux Mint 21.3 release.
For the 21.3 EDGE ISO, which they provide for people who have issues booting systems with their main downloads, they will be releasing a 21.3 EDGE ISO with Linux kernel 6.5 as they said "During BETA testing we identified compatibility issues between Linux Mint and new hardware devices (recent AMD graphics but also wireless chipsets and SSD controllers used in Acer laptops). These are solved by upgrading the kernel series from 5.15 to 6.5.".
Since they go by what kernels Ubuntu officially provide, since Mint is based on Ubuntu, they're stuck with whatever the latest Ubuntu provides since Mint don't package up their own kernels.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Luke_Nukem Jan 4
And 6.5 kernel is EOL https://endoflife.date/linux
Quoting: Luke_NukemThey're going to find it harder and harder to keep using ancient shit as a base. It's fucking ridiculous that they used such an old kernel for so long in the first place.
And 6.5 kernel is EOL https://endoflife.date/linux
Kernel 6.x is only needed for a short period of time for people using newer hardware. Everyone else can use 5.15 (LTS) and ignore this ISO. It's absolutely normal to have an older kernel in an LTS release, and Linux Mint only does this kind of releases. Most people have hardware older than 3 years, so they're covered. And most people are fine without the bleeding edge as long as they get security updates, which is the case here.
clatterfordslim Jan 5
this is not exclusive to Linux Mint, it's inherent to ISOs being statically built
if Mint shipped 6.6 (current stable version from kernel.org) it would at best ship 6.6.10 (released 2024-01-05), but soon kernel.org will release bug and security updates as 6.6.11 and 6.6.10 would still be what's cooked inside the ISO
that's why the first thing a user should do after i itial setup is updating everything
being 6.2.x or 6.5.x instead of 6.6.x is irrelevant for this
besides that, Linux Mint does not ship upstream kernels from kernel.org... it ships the HWE (hardware enablement) versions of Ubuntu Kernel from kernel.ubuntu.org... and those are always one or a few versions behind in numbering (ask Canonical why, not Mint team) while cherry-picking improvements from the latest stable and backporting security updates and bug fixes
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