I've seen reports of systems booting to a kernel panic with an "unable to mount fs" message, although I haven't experienced that particular problem myself. My issue was repeated freezes when waking from suspend, and switching back to an LTS kernel stopped them. Are the kernel 7.x issues generally resolved now, and is it reasonably safe to upgrade, or should I stay on LTS for the time being?
3 Answers
Users running the 7-series kernels on Debian-based systems have reported using them without kernel panics. Some people also rarely encounter panics at all, especially with simpler hardware and without proprietary graphics drivers or VirtualBox. The safest upgrade path is to install the newer kernel alongside LTS, test booting and suspend/resume, and return to LTS if anything misbehaves.
Kernel 7.x has been around long enough that a widespread, unresolved panic would probably be getting a lot of attention and could delay releases. That said, problems can depend heavily on the distribution, hardware, and setup, so I’d keep the LTS kernel installed as a fallback and test the newer one rather than removing the known-good option.
Many of the panic reports seem to involve Linux Mint systems running VirtualBox, so they may be related to the interaction between that virtualization software and the kernel rather than a universal kernel 7.x problem. If you’re using VirtualBox, checking its compatibility with the specific kernel release is especially important.
That matches what I’ve seen too. The reports appeared concentrated in Mint and VirtualBox setups, and the issue may have been resolved in newer updates, but I’d still test before switching permanently.