Is it too much to ask for Fedora to have multiple kernels simultaneously?

Yes, it is. Fedora kernels are maintained by a single person. And kernel maintenance is a ton of work. It's already probably too much for a single person to maintain one kernel.

The Fedora kernel maintainer's focus is to try to get fixes upstream and backport them if necessary.

A beautiful answer.

Well, great, people who have just installed Fedora 41 have a choice between the outdated and unsupported 6.11.4 kernel or the utterly broken 6.13.4.

Nothing in between, unless you dare to install an RC or another kernel, e.g. from ELN.

As a short-term workaround - if you dnf install fedora-repos-archive you can install old updates using dnf --enablerepo=updates-archive install kernel=VER-REL

I would have loved to downgrade to 6.12.14, alas, Fedora has already purged it from all its mirrors. Yeah, it's still available on Bodhi except, it's not signed and it doesn't support Secure Boot.

I don't understand this. Any kernel update that made it to Bodhi should be signed both in Fedora and SB terms. How did you try and download a 6.12 kernel? bodhi updates download --updateid=FEDORA-2025-cca2fcc70c should get you signed packages.

I would have loved to downgrade to 6.12.14, alas, Fedora has already purged it from all its mirrors. Yeah, it's still available on Bodhi except, it's not signed and it doesn't support Secure Boot.

I don't understand this. Any kernel update that made it to Bodhi should be signed both in Fedora and SB terms. How did you try and download a 6.12 kernel? bodhi updates download --updateid=FEDORA-2025-cca2fcc70c should get you signed packages.

sadly -- no, bodhi updates download yields unsigned builds, just rpm -qip the downloaded packages

This should probably be fixed - when it pulls the packages from Koji it should pass the signature required, then Koji will provide the right packages

I have my wrapper script to do this since the key has to be passed in a certain way (short ID and lowercase)

If Koji builds were signed, I would never start this discussion.

1. They are not signed
2. They do not support Secure Boot

If Koji builds were signed, I would never start this discussion.

1. They are not signed
2. They do not support Secure Boot

They are - if you pass --key - but given the signing for the kernel is different, IDK if the signed build from Koji is enough or not. Enabling the updates-archived repo as I mentioned above is probably the easiest way for you.

dnf install fedora-repos-archive

dnf search --showduplicates kernel-core

Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Matched fields: name (exact)
kernel-core-0:6.11.4-301.fc41.x86_64: The Linux kernel
kernel-core-0:6.11.5-300.fc41.x86_64: The Linux kernel
kernel-core-0:6.11.6-300.fc41.x86_64: The Linux kernel
kernel-core-0:6.11.7-300.fc41.x86_64: The Linux kernel
kernel-core-0:6.11.8-300.fc41.x86_64: The Linux kernel
kernel-core-0:6.11.10-300.fc41.x86_64: The Linux kernel
kernel-core-0:6.11.11-300.fc41.x86_64: The Linux kernel
kernel-core-0:6.12.4-200.fc41.x86_64: The Linux kernel
kernel-core-0:6.12.5-200.fc41.x86_64: The Linux kernel
kernel-core-0:6.12.6-200.fc41.x86_64: The Linux kernel
kernel-core-0:6.12.7-200.fc41.x86_64: The Linux kernel
kernel-core-0:6.12.8-200.fc41.x86_64: The Linux kernel
kernel-core-0:6.12.9-200.fc41.x86_64: The Linux kernel
kernel-core-0:6.12.10-200.fc41.x86_64: The Linux kernel
kernel-core-0:6.12.11-200.fc41.x86_64: The Linux kernel
kernel-core-0:6.12.13-200.fc41.x86_64: The Linux kernel
kernel-core-0:6.12.15-200.fc41.x86_64: The Linux kernel
kernel-core-0:6.13.4-200.fc41.x86_64: The Linux kernel

dnf install kernel-6.12.15

Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Package Arch Version Repository Size
Installing:
kernel x86_64 6.12.15-200.fc41 updates-archive 0.0 B
Installing dependencies:
kernel-core x86_64 6.12.15-200.fc41 updates-archive 73.5 MiB
kernel-modules x86_64 6.12.15-200.fc41 updates-archive 62.4 MiB
kernel-modules-core x86_64 6.12.15-200.fc41 updates-archive 37.1 MiB

Transaction Summary:
Installing: 4 packages

Total size of inbound packages is 121 MiB. Need to download 64 MiB.
After this operation, 173 MiB extra will be used (install 173 MiB, remove 0 B).
Is this ok [y/N]:
Operation aborted by the user.

That'll work. I've never known about this repo. Thank you very much and sorry for the noise then.

I would have loved to downgrade to 6.12.14, alas, Fedora has already purged it from all its mirrors. Yeah, it's still available on Bodhi except, it's not signed and it doesn't support Secure Boot.

I don't understand this. Any kernel update that made it to Bodhi should be signed both in Fedora and SB terms. How did you try and download a 6.12 kernel? bodhi updates download --updateid=FEDORA-2025-cca2fcc70c should get you signed packages.

sadly -- no, bodhi updates download yields unsigned builds, just rpm -qip the downloaded packages

This should probably be fixed - when it pulls the packages from Koji it should pass the signature required, then Koji will provide the right packages

I have my wrapper script to do this since the key has to be passed in a certain way (short ID and lowercase)

oh, wow, it doesn't do that? I never noticed, always assumed it did. Yeah, we should fix that. I know the key ID trick, I just assumed using Bodhi meant you didn't have to bother with it.

We need to fix it: RPM 6.0 will reject unsigned packages across the board by default...

OK, I fixed it.