Hi! This is a bit of a newbie question, so please bear with me.
I purchased a laptop that has a specific hardware issue under Linux (the keyboard does not function). A patch fixing the issue was approved for 6.8 and incorporated in the “stable tree” of older kernels: 5.4, 5.10, 5.15, 6.6, 6.7, etc.
My question is: Do distros ship with an updated kernel that incorporates all the patches? Or does the user need to update after installation for the patches to be applied? I imagine that it may perhaps vary from distro to distro, but I honestly don’t know.
The question is relevant for me because, potentially, I would have to install the actual distro and update, rather than just try out a live version.
This is an excellent answer. My eli5 addition is this:
It depends on your distro. Distros that do more hand holding and more compatibility without additional operator involvement will be more likely to backport or use a stable kernel with backports like these. Examples: Ubuntu/Fedora/Mint. Distros that focus on system stability will take much longer to integrate backports like these, ex: Debian. And masochists will tell you to do it yourself, ex: lfs, arch.