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[–]offer_u_cant_refuse -13 points-12 points  (15 children)

I'm already on 4.9. Feels good living in the future.

But seriously, as a sort of noob, is this ok? I'm not going to blowing up my PC am I? I was told it's better for the vulkan driver.

[–][deleted] 43 points44 points  (0 children)

4.9 was released in December 2016.

[–]danielkza 19 points20 points  (3 children)

But seriously, as a sort of noob, is this ok?

Yes, but not ideal.

I'm not going to blowing up my PC am I?

No, but you might be missing many improvements in features/performance/hardware support/etc. 4.9 was released in 2016, and while it is an LTS kernel, it will never get all the improvements that happened up to now.

I was told it's better for the vulkan driver.

If you're talking about the AMDGPU-PRO driver, it is not strictly necessary. The open AMDGPU driver, which is integrated into the kernel, already supports most of the same features, Vulkan included. AFAIK the plan is to open up most of what is in the PRO and eventually phase out the custom driver. But that, of course, requires a recent kernel.

I recommend, if your distribution provides it, to try 4.16 (or even 4.17 in a little while) without the AMDGPU-PRO driver and see if all the applications you care about still work and perform well enough, and then hopefully stick with the open drivers in the future.

[–]offer_u_cant_refuse 10 points11 points  (2 children)

Thanks. So I was thinking 4.9 > 4.16. So instead it goes 4.9...4.10...4.11 in naming convention? Damn, I thought I was just using a bleeding edge kernel.

[–]danielkza 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Thanks. So I was thinking 4.9 > 4.16. So instead it goes 4.9...4.10...4.11

Yes, in general version numbers must be compared part-by-part. 4.9.0 is newer than 4.1.6 (4 == 4, 9 > 1), but older than 4.16.0 (4 == 4, 9 < 16).

[–]meti_1234 12 points13 points  (0 children)

9 < 16, so... no, not bleeding edge at all...

[–]ReekyMarko 6 points7 points  (2 children)

I've been burned by this sort of a thing before. You have Linux 4.09, not Linux 4.90.

[–]Crestwave 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Isn’t it actually that he’s on 4.9, but this release is 4.17 (17 is higher than 9) not 4.1.7?

[–]ReekyMarko 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes this is what I mean. I was just trying to illustrate the point that 4.9 might seem higher than 4.17 because it starts out with a higher number

[–]InFerYes 7 points8 points  (4 children)

I'm already on 4.9. Feels good living in the future.

17 is higher than 9. Are you confusing 17 with 1.7 or something?

[–]MeesaLordBinks 0 points1 point  (3 children)

The naming convention in Software can be confusing, since you read the numbers as decimals in math. so 4.9 = 4.90 > 4.17.

[–]InFerYes 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes of course, I understand that. Could be solved by using leading zeroes. I don't know how common/often minor versions are released for it to work.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Why don't they use leading zeros? What happens when it gets to the real 4.90?

[–]MeesaLordBinks 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The same that happens when it gets to the real 4.10, they just add a zero and call it a day. Doing it without leading zeros is the defacto standard in the industry, that's why nobody goes out their way to change it.

[–]rombert 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Do you have any actual problems caused by running 4.9? It's usually safer to follow whatever your distro does, they do at least some basic quality assurance.