[SirGiggles]

Then look back to 2.2.6, it supported up to 6.10. A far cry from only supporting only up to 6.6 so I'm not seeing where they were going with with their initial statement until they define what they mean by stable.

https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/releases/tag/zfs-2.2.6

Edit: changed sentence to make more sense

Edit 2: And if we are to interpret stable as in Linux LTS, then that would be 6.12 which is supported by 2.2.7 as you said

[hamandcheese]

Linux kernel 6.10 is EOL.

Non-LTS kernels very frequently go EOL before OpenZFS supports them, or there is only a very brief window that there is support for a non-EOL kernel.

In practice, it's hard to use a non-LTS kernel with openzfs for any significant duration.

[SirGiggles]

That's a fair point and I don't disagree. I guess my main point of contention was the implication that either a) ZFS wasn't stable on anything non-LTS or b) the Linux kernels themselves were unstable outside of a LTS.

What stable means in this case is subject to individual use cases. In my case, I don't find having to wait a bit for ZFS to catch up despite being on an EOL kernel to be catastrophic, but after having some time to think, I can see why someone would need an LTS kernel.

[hamandcheese]

I think we are on the same page. To clarify: if your goal is to be on stable ZFS AND non-EOL Linux kernel, then LTS kernel is usually the only option. There may be windows where there are non-LTS-non-EOL kernels supported, but non-LTS kernels go EOL very quickly, so those windows are fleeting.

This impacts distributions like NixOS in particular, which have a strict policy of removing EOL kernels.

[SirGiggles]

I wasn't aware NixOS prunes EOL kernels, thanks for letting me know; this throws a bit of wrench/damper in my personal machine plans.

[hamandcheese]

Woah woah woah don't let me dissuade you from NixOS. I am still a happy NixOS+ZFS user, and my fingers are crossed that I'll soon get to upgrade to kernel 6.12 :)

[SirGiggles]

No worries on that front, I expect that fun fact to be just a minor setback but I'm still pretty dead set on making my personal infrastructure declarative, reproducible, and anti-hysteresis.

[prmoustache]

Honestly I wouldn't even try running ZFS on anything else but a distro that ship it like ubuntu or its variant or a distro with long term support like almalinux 9.