I have recently upgraded my first Linux Mint 17 windows dual boot machine to windows10 and Mint 18 dual boot due to some original errors i made with the Mint 17 installation when that first became available-or I noticed it and decided to try Linux for the first time with mint 17. the errors I made trying to make the AMd proprietary drivers work and egregious copy/paste without looking first errors made the upgrade to Mint 18 seem like a good idea.
as everyone probably knows by now, the kernel upgrading is a built in option and I did stop the upgrade on its own immediately -or after it did it once.
however. prior to this move to mint 18, I upgraded every machine i changed over to linux-all Mint 17.3 by now- and 2 are Mate, and one is cinnamon -meta -mate which i did somehow or other after i put cinnamon in from the live cd and didnt like the interface as much as Mate.
I have one fairly old Toshiba A215 s74xx laptop that i put mint 17 and now up to 17.3 and took the kernel up to 3.19.058 and there it has stayed for 10months or thereabouts.
I think i replied to this already but it was before i upgraded to mint 18. and noticed that the kernel upgrading was easily managed through update manager
I also used "kernelupdate" application once. was too fast tracked for my very newbie status. I took my kernel upgrades only to try to make some hardware function, or function better if i read posts regarding one or 2 of the older-or brand new- pieces of hardware i had in a specific machine might be addressed in a newer kernel. I also went backwards once or twice as well to try to regain functionality
john

It has been some 8-12 years since I was forced to recompile kernels. I use fedora releases. My most mature laptop is version 19 (64 bit) with 4 recomplies from yum. My latest is version 25 beta going to release this month on an Atom (32 bit). Right now, all I have is Dell, I did not succeed in an install on an HP having been delivered with Windows 10.

I have have only done it once. That was on a 486, Redhat 5.2 and a whole lot of second hand bits and pieces.

For some odd-ball reason, I get the newer kernels which do require compiling. I'm "floating between 4.4.5 and 4.4.23. I have 4.7.0-4.7.4 but only use the 4.7.x series on the "thing" (test box) to put it thru the its paces. I suppose I like to torture myself with these constant (1 or 2 times a month) kernel compiles. I do every now and then set some option that when booting gives me to "can't find root" type of error msg, then halts. Back to the response dodger666's reply: Yes, there wasn't the loadable modules we have now. Although, at some point, I don't remember when, there was a patch that you did to put it in the kernel. Very simple compared to the loadable module system we have now. Oh, 1 last thing: If anybody is wondering about me "fubar'ing" my system, the answer is yes. I'm my own worst user on my 5 systems (2 laptops and 3 desktops. My Stable system is not connected to internet of any of my other systems. That one is for real work, not screwing around with software etc...

Once upon a time I ENJOYED compiling a new kernel, it made a smaller, faster, more targeted kernel for my hardware.
I do not have that much time to waste these days, and there is less advantage. Now I either use the most recent distribution kernel or the newest OpenVZ kernel. Since the OpenVZ kernel is falling so far behind (apparently the company pulled the paid developers off of it, slowing things WAY down) I forsee having to depend upon distribution kernels ONLY at some point. Not just yet, but soon.

Huh? openSUSE's tumbleweed comes as of yesterday evening with 4.8.6-1...

The kernel is up to 4.9 now .

4.9-rc4 as your own link shows. 4.8.6 is the latest stable kernel in case dustyz16 needs something solid .

Who knows how many rc versions will appear in the life of this thread?

Linus?

I think he would be p***ed off at my speculatinmg about s*** I know nothing about.

Ah. I didn't say "ask him" I said he might know.

"Do You Compile Your Own Kernel or Use The One Shipped With Your Distribution?" I don't know how to compile anything. I use what comes with MX-15.