Gregory's Server@astraleureka @mjg59 @james That makes sense, although it does get me that RHEL 9.0 was released May 2022 with a Kernel that had already been EOL for six months.
I can get why you'd avoid upgrading subsequent releases to keep things stable for enterprise customers, but surely you'd want to start off up to date?
@StryderNotavi @astraleureka @mjg59 @james A package freeze occurs before GA, and at that point in time CentOS Stream had 5.14. The term backporting is commonly used, but it makes things sound minor. RHEL engineering rebases entire subsystems in the kernel, it's why the version number can't be used for comparisons. It only marks the starting point; the RHEL 9.4 kernel is more like a 6.5/6.6 kernel today than 5.14.