Today I got another batch of updates that required yet another change to kernel 3.8.0 for 13.04. This marks the fourth kernel update in about a month. I can't remember a time when the kernel seemed so unstable. Are these all security updates? Is this a problem with 3.8.0 in general? Upstream changes at Debian? Linus not paying as much attention as he should?
To me, kernel updates for a released version of Ubuntu should be an infrequent event. Even more often than once per month seems excessive. Moreover recent changes have introduced regressions that later needed correction. My Intel wifi card failed to work after one of these updates, though it was fixed a week or two later.
I can see pushing out new kernels when they have security issues, as was apparently the case today. Should I conclude from the pace of change that the 3.8 kernel has a lot of vulnerabilities that need fixing? It may not simply be the kernel that is vulnerable either; today's update seemed to result from a fix to dbus.
Unless all these changes were to fix newly-found vulnerabilities, I don't see any argument for this pace of change in the kernel. For non-security issues, they should just be compiled into a single update, perhaps on a monthly basis.
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