Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 13 Sep 2000 06:08:04 -0700 | From | Chip Salzenberg <> | Subject | Re: Distro kernel patches (was Re: Linux 2.2.18pre4) |
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According to Ralf Gerbig: > but SuSe and I believe RedHat etc. etc. _do_ ship patched kernels.
You've just made L-K's understatement of the day.
VA has always shipped a patched kernel. As of a few weeks ago, I'm VA's new kernel coordinator. We're not quite done with the current internal development cycle for a new kernel; but already we've applied to our kernel tree about a dozen major patches and over fifty minor ones. And that's on top of 2.2.18pre, into which Alan had already merged USB, AGP, and DRM (Thanks, Alan!!!). People who run big systems and big applications need these patches: 2.4 isn't ready for production use, stock 2.2 can't make full use of modern hardware, and the world is moving at Internet time.
And VA's patching habits are the rule, not the exception. Andrea makes SuSE's kernel, and anyone who's scanned people/andrea on kernel.org knows how many patches he uses. (I greatly appreciate Andrea's patch archive, BTW. It's a great place to get major patches reconciled with each other.) And Red Hat's kernel, last I looked, had over 150 patches on top of 2.2.14.
On the other hand, just because patching is inevitable doesn't mean that reducing it isn't worthwhile. The more de facto standard patches (*cough* NFS RAID[1] HedrickIDE *ahem*) can get into the 2.2 tree, the easier it will be for everyone to stay up to date, and the less effort will be wasted on basically clerical patch maintenance work.
[1] I understand the RAID issue with disk format compatibility, which makes the current RAID patch unacceptable for official 2.2 usage. I just wish somebody would *solve* that issue.[2] [2] Having complained about a problem, have I just volunteered myself to solve it? (HHOS) -- Chip Salzenberg - a.k.a. - <chip@valinux.com> "I wanted to play hopscotch with the impenetrable mystery of existence, but he stepped in a wormhole and had to go in early." // MST3K - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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