Messages in this thread |  | | From | John Alvord <> | Subject | Re: Kernel Releases | Date | Sun, 25 Nov 2001 23:15:09 -0800 |
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On Sun, 25 Nov 2001 09:12:10 -0500, John Jasen <jjasen1@umbc.edu> wrote:
>On Sat, 24 Nov 2001, John Alvord wrote: > >> Development kernels are development kernels... nothing else. Look to >> distributors for high degrees of quality assurance testing. When you run a >> development kernel you have joined the development team, even if you don't >> know it. Finding and reporting bugs is your job... > >That's why you stay away from 2.5.x, or 2.4.x-pre, or 2.4.x-ac -- which >are development kernels. 2.4.x kernels are released kernels.
2.<even>.x are "stablizing" kernels, where (theoretically) only bug fixes are accepted. But the code hasn't been through any QA cycle at the moment of release. It is still a developer release in any traditional software development definition.
I am quite impressed that Linus hangs on to the initial x.<even> series until it becomes close to production quality. Notice that an important user (google) came up with a severe error very late in the day and Linus held things up for a few weeks until that was cleared. Notice the months long struggle to decide on a VM solution. In this cycle, it took maybe ten months to shepard 2.4.0 into something of excellent potential that is a real step forward from the 2.2 series.
Everyone who participated can be proud.
john alvord - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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