How do you decide when to upgrade your Linux system?

[neltnerb]

So I've got VMware Workstation Pro 15.0.something installed on Ubuntu 18.04 and it works fine.

I'd love to upgrade to Ubuntu 19.04 but each time I seem to upgrade my OS, VMware Workstation Pro fails to work for some random amount of time based on how long it takes for them to include support for the latest kernel.

I can never seem to figure out from the dot release changelogs when they actually support the current Ubuntu stable kernels.

What do others do? Is there some special place we can check for when it supports an updated OS version? I realize it's unfair to expect VMware to hit a moving target, but I'd love to at least be notified when the target platform is ready and "16.04 and up" is clearly inaccurate.

[continuum]

Watch the forum:
it is always the same - when a new kernel or a new Linux-release appears you will first see messages like:

Workstation XY does not compile all modules....
Some time after that first messages appear where someone created a patch or found a workaround to fix the problem.
Typically some months after that a new Workstation release finally supports the new kernel/ Linux release.
Experienced Workstation Linux users know this and do not update the Linux-host  before at least a working patch is available.

[louyo]

I agree with Continuum. Don't upgrade until you see a patch.

[mkubecek]

For the record, patches needed to build host modules against kernel 5.0 have been publicly available since the day v5.0-rc1 was released. And unless something breaks in the rest of the development cycle (which is unlikely), patches needed to build against kernel 5.1 have been publicly available since the day v5.1-rc1 was released (actually, in a testing branch, it was even one week earlier).

[neltnerb]

My policy is to just not upgrade until it's officially in the Workstation support, I just don't like installing patches written that I don't understand.

But I wish the changelogs at least made it clear that it was safe to upgrade =/ Right now there's no way I could know if it's ready other than searching the forums for people complaining which seems ridiculous. I'm fine waiting, just let me know when they're ready for it, right?