Linux kernel 6.10 is EOL.

Non-LTS kernels very frequently go EOL before OpenZFS supports them, or there is only a very brief window that there is support for a non-EOL kernel.

In practice, it's hard to use a non-LTS kernel with openzfs for any significant duration.

That's a fair point and I don't disagree. I guess my main point of contention was the implication that either a) ZFS wasn't stable on anything non-LTS or b) the Linux kernels themselves were unstable outside of a LTS.

What stable means in this case is subject to individual use cases. In my case, I don't find having to wait a bit for ZFS to catch up despite being on an EOL kernel to be catastrophic, but after having some time to think, I can see why someone would need an LTS kernel.

I think we are on the same page. To clarify: if your goal is to be on stable ZFS AND non-EOL Linux kernel, then LTS kernel is usually the only option. There may be windows where there are non-LTS-non-EOL kernels supported, but non-LTS kernels go EOL very quickly, so those windows are fleeting.

This impacts distributions like NixOS in particular, which have a strict policy of removing EOL kernels.

I wasn't aware NixOS prunes EOL kernels, thanks for letting me know; this throws a bit of wrench/damper in my personal machine plans.

Woah woah woah don't let me dissuade you from NixOS. I am still a happy NixOS+ZFS user, and my fingers are crossed that I'll soon get to upgrade to kernel 6.12 :)

No worries on that front, I expect that fun fact to be just a minor setback but I'm still pretty dead set on making my personal infrastructure declarative, reproducible, and anti-hysteresis.

Honestly I wouldn't even try running ZFS on anything else but a distro that ship it like ubuntu or its variant or a distro with long term support like almalinux 9.