What is linode kernel for?

>>You can boot your Linode using your choice of Linode’s own kernel or the upstream kernel provided by a distribution’s maintainers.

I know that, thank you very much.

Booting with Linode’s kernel is enabled by default, but changing to the distro-supplied kernel is easy.

I know that too.

This is useful if you’d like to enable specific kernel features, or if you’d prefer to handle kernel upgrades yourself.

Yep, that's what I have always believed.

Now, do you happen to know, what linode kernel is for? That is, what are the advantages of running linode kernel over a distribution supplied kernel?

Why did linode need a custom kernel?

Thank you in advance,

Andrew

The only thing I know and the only thing that matters to me, is that the original CentOS kernel supports SELinux and the linode custom kernel does not. I use SELinux heavily on my servers.

@zespri:

Now, do you happen to know, what linode kernel is for? That is, what are the advantages of running linode kernel over a distribution supplied kernel?

It was more difficult to run custom stuff under Xen, although it did have PV-Grub for Grub Legacy compatibility. If you go back far enough in Linode's history, there was probably a technical reason to have the hypervisor supply the kernel to the guest.

In terms what what advantages there are - Linode 'latest' kernels tend to be pretty far ahead of those supplied by LTS distros. It's basically just an easy way to use a relatively new kernel.

Back in the UML days, there was no choice.