Obviously, not all devices have up-to-date kernels. It depends on whether they are supported by relevant Android distributions. That's why I used the phrase "quite up-to-date" instead of just "up-to-date". Unfortunately for you, LineageOS has stopped supporting i9300 Samsung Galaxy S3 with the latest official release being 14.1, which is based on Nougat (Android 7.1.2).
Having said that, I ran across the following post that describes successful installation of LineageOS 18.1 (Android 11) ROM on Samsung Galaxy S3 i9300: https://devsjournal.com/install-lineage-os-in-galaxy-s3-i930.... This is just FYI. So, if you understand relevant risks and feel adventurous, you can try to install it on your device. Disclaimer: I'm neither affiliated with the author of the post, nor responsible for any damage that might be associated with following the advice contained in the above-linked post.
Thank you for looking up that ROM, as I might want to try it out. However, you are also proving my point, even that ROM with Android 11 is still running the old 3.0.101 Linux kernel. You can see it in the video at the last row:
So congratulations to the guy who made it possible to run Android 11 with that ancient Linux kernel, even when Android officially doesn't support it. And to illustrate what I mean by ancient: Linux 3.0 was released in 2011 and got support updates until 2013 [1]. So even when CyanogenMod/LineageOS supported the Samsung Galaxy S3 the included Linux kernels were old as crap. You can't blame them for it, as they had little choice given that a few crucial drivers are not open source and included in the upstream Linux kernel.
I just wonder if anything has changed for modern devices?
backported 4.2, which includes some of the 4.3 changes as well. supports lineage. 4.1 is a version google supports till 2024, so I'm assuming 4.2/4.3 is going to be even later. So, you got a phone from 2011 that's going to run a modern kernel and latest android till after 2024.
> And to illustrate what I mean by ancient
yes. I would love to see an iphone from 2011 that's going to be running the latest ios and apple kernel after 2024.
Given that the kernel still identifies as 3.0.101, my guess is that they just backported some features from 4.x and applied them to the ancient kernel ;-) I am not so sure that qualifies as a 4.1 in terms of Android support.
I think the discussion about which devices live longer is simple to answer: Apple (iPhone) and Google (Nexus/Pixel) do probably the best job of supporting their devices for a while from a manufacturers point of view (in comparison to Samsung, Xiaomi, LG, Huawei, Sony, etc.). However, if you want to spend some time and flash alternative ROMs yourself you are better off with Android due to the large modder community, but it also depends a bit on the device you bought.
My biggest issue on the other hand, is that if the manufacturers would also open source the drivers, they could be included in the Linux kernel and we would not have this discussions, because one could simply use an up-to-date kernel as you can with every PC.
And how does the kernel affect you in any way. Most of the internet runs on old kernels because servers user long term stable kernels anyway. If they ux is good the kernel shouldn't be a problem to you
1. UX: most of the time kernel updates don't affect the user experience. However, from time to time there are scheduler updates which can have positive effects.
2. Security: Being able to run the kernel with the latest security updates is evidently very important to have a system that is not vulnerable to newly discovered exploits.
3. Dependencies: As discussed already, some software components like the Android itself requires certain kernel features and therefore certain versions to let you run the latest versions of the software.
Btw. even LTS kernels are just supported for six years or so.
My biggest problem with the situation is, that 99% of the software is open source (Android incl. the Linux kernel) and just a few vendor-specific drivers make it very hard to upgrade the kernel and therefore the system.
Having said that, I ran across the following post that describes successful installation of LineageOS 18.1 (Android 11) ROM on Samsung Galaxy S3 i9300: https://devsjournal.com/install-lineage-os-in-galaxy-s3-i930.... This is just FYI. So, if you understand relevant risks and feel adventurous, you can try to install it on your device. Disclaimer: I'm neither affiliated with the author of the post, nor responsible for any damage that might be associated with following the advice contained in the above-linked post.