Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: Reviving the concept of a stable series (was Re: starting with 2.7) | From | (Eric W. Biederman) | Date | 04 Jan 2005 00:00:19 -0700 |
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Horst von Brand <vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl> writes:
> "L. A. Walsh" <law@tlinx.org> said: > > > It seems that some developers have the opinion that the end-user base > > no longer is their problem or audience and that the distros will patch > > all the little boo-boo's in each unstable 2.6 release. > > AFAIU, the current development model is designed to _diminish_ the need of > custom patching by distributions. For example, RH 9 2.4 kernels were mostly > 2.6 via backports and random patches. But the patches were only maintained > by RH, so it was a large duplication of effort (not even counting the other > distributions). With 2.6 everybody can work on a up-to-date code base, much > less need of distribution backports and patches (and associated random > incompatibilities) benefits every user.
And that idea I really appreciate it. From the looks of things though it does not feel like the distros have caught on. I know at least that it has been painful working with SuSE's 2.6.ancient fork when I have perfectly good code that runs in 2.6.latest.
If the distros will update their base kernel once a year or so I can seem some benefits to the new dev model. But so far I have not seen the updates and when you have to use a distro kernel is seems to be the same old same old.
> > It seems like it would become quite a chore > > to decide what code is let into the stable version. It's also > > considered by many to be "less" fun, not only to "manage the > > stable distro", but backport code into the previous distro. > > Lots of rather pointless work. Much of it something each distribution has > to do on their own (because f.ex. vanilla 2.4 is _just fixes_, no backports > of cool (and required) new functionality), instead of cooperating in > building a better overall kernel.
Except some features did make it into 2.4.x like native pci-express support. That is certainly more than just fixes.
> > Nevertheless, it would be nice to see a no-new-features, stable series > > spun off from these development kernels, maybe .4th number releases, > > like 2.6.10 also becomes a 2.6.10.0 that starts a 2.6.10.1, then 2.6.10.2, > > etc...with iteritive bug fixes to the same kernel and no new features > > in such a branch, it might become stable enough for users to have confidence > > installing them on their desktop or stable machines. > > See above. The 2.6.9-x kernels from Red Hat/Fedora are targeted to be > exactly that...
Ah another fork that makes support from third parties a pain. So it appears Red Hat is going the same way I have observed with SuSE.
I do believe a model where we stabilize features and let them shake out independently. Is where we need to go for Linux. But we seem still to be at the teething stage and I am frustrated.
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