Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 4 Jan 2005 18:47:13 +0100 | From | Adrian Bunk <> | Subject | Re: starting with 2.7 |
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On Mon, Jan 03, 2005 at 04:59:02PM +0100, Arjan van de Ven wrote: > On Mon, 2005-01-03 at 16:34 +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote: > > On Mon, Jan 03, 2005 at 10:18:47AM -0500, Rik van Riel wrote: > > > On Sun, 2 Jan 2005, Andries Brouwer wrote: > > > > > > >You change some stuff. The bad mistakes are discovered very soon. > > > >Some subtler things or some things that occur only in special > > > >configurations or under special conditions or just with > > > >very low probability may not be noticed until much later. > > > > > > Some of these subtle bugs are only discovered a year > > > after the distribution with some particular kernel has > > > been deployed - at which point the kernel has moved on > > > so far that the fix the distro does might no longer > > > apply (even in concept) to the upstream kernel... > > > > > > This is especially true when you are talking about really > > > big database servers and bugs that take weeks or months > > > to trigger. > > > > If at this time 2.8 was already released, the 2.8 kernel available at > > this time will be roughly what 2.6 would have been under the current > > development model, and 2.6 will be a rock stable kernel. > > as long as more things get fixed than new bugs introduced (and that > still seems to be the case) things only improve in 2.6. >...
My main point is not the number of bugs, but the number of regressions.
If you do install a new machine or do a major upgrade (e.g. 2.4 -> 2.6) you do some testing whether everything works as expected and if something doesn't work, you try to get it working or work around the problem.
Inside a stable kernel series (e.g. 2.6.x -> 2.6.y) you hope that an upgrade doesn't contain regressions and goes smoothly.
Even the introduction of CONFIG_BLK_DEV_UB in 2.6.9 [1] has bitten several people I know.
cu Adrian
[1] this is not technically a bug, but e.g. similar common problems for users in the input code were already fixed during 2.5 long before 2.6.0
--
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