whatever comes with ubuntu 18.04. 4.18 kernel.

My first kernel, 0.99, it fit in a diskette. Year? 1991?2?3?
First distro: Slackware, my favourite for years until I move to Debian.

Hiho!

Actually that depends on what system I need to run it… On my new Lenovo Notebook I need to run an extra baked latest greatest 5.x kernel to get everything working. On my older Fujitsu the off the shelf 5.0.x from Canonical works just fine. But on all my ARM development systems I often enough have no choice... For Rockchip I need to use 4.9.x to have video acceleration, for iMX I often need to use 4.2 with video or 5.x with speed but no VPU / GPU...

But there is nothing better then configuring your own kernel options on the mainline kernel, flashing it to your own ARM board and then seeing it coming up, spitting out some serial messages...

I think the newest realeases are better, but one of the success of linux is that it is adaptable with older hardware with
olders kernels, it is flexibility and is perfect.

Linux 5.3.0-1 Running on Manjaro 18.1.0 rc9
Linux 5.2.9 Running on Kali Linux 2019.3

Both work without fail. This is a dual boot through UEFI

My favorite kernel is any kernel that works reliably on all my hardware and is secure that respects my privacy.

I'm in an ideal situation.

I've never noticed a difference between any of the many kernel releases.
They just work, perfectly.

I think I may be using 4.9 - but I could be wrong.
For a long time I was on 3.xx (where xx changed over the years).

4.4.0 base and 4.8.0 and 4.10.0 <---- runs my desktop perfect, newer versions fail to output my subwoofer channel.


my first linux distro was Ubutnu 10.04

I started using linux with Ubuntu Hard Heron and Linux Kernel 2.6.24, its implemented significant improvements, Btrfs, suport Multi-core CPU
and access point, and implemnet the Ext4 file system, and some new features to configurate the grafics.
This was my first experience with Linux and I loved it, and never pass a new version without test.

Actualy I'm using
edpes@criativo:~$ uname -a
Linux criativo 4.4.0-112-generic #135-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jan 19 11:48:36 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
With Lite distro that I have been used for long five year, this is my favorite one. very estable. amd I can do anything, and don't think change nothing

Edson Pessotti
Tecnologo and Programing Computer
São Paulo / Brazil.

Hmm, still have to figure out.Atm i try kali.linux and parrot os

Using kernel 4.10 with Mint 18.3. Most things work perfectly except when manufacturers don't supply drivers.

Well, I'm particularly fond of the 2.2 kernel because it was a big improvement, moreover I had to write a few device drivers on that kernel version and I really enjoyed working on it.

2.4 Was a breath of fresh air regarding video drivers and a few other stuff.

Between 2.4 and 2.6 I was using LFS (Linux From Scratch) so I was particularly careful to every new thing that came out because it meant a lot of clickety clackety (I made a series of scripts that rebuilt the whole distro almost automatically, but they needed a log of maintenance).

After that, when I finally gave up (it was becoming an unpaid full-time job) and moved to Ubuntu I sorta stopped paying attention to kernel releases, except when something suddenly stops working and I have to manually revert to the previous one :-)

Probably 3.16.x and 4.9.x. I don't have hardware that requires anything newer.

I don't really keep track of the kernel version in use as it changes with each new version of Linux - I have been running Mint for several years and have had no reason to think about the kernel. The one that does stand out was 2.4; it felt like it offered several important improvements, in particular support for USB.

I use MX Linux 18 currently on several old ToughBooks.
Think it’s 4.19.5 Debian Stable 9.6
https://mxlinux.org/current-release-features/