Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 3 Dec 2005 15:29:54 +0100 | From | Jesper Juhl <> | Subject | Re: RFC: Starting a stable kernel series off the 2.6 kernel |
| |
On 12/3/05, Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> wrote: > The current kernel development model is pretty good for people who > always want to use or offer their costumers the maximum amount of the > latest bugs^Wfeatures without having to resort on additional patches for > them. > > Problems of the current development model from a user's point of view > are: > - many regressions in every new release > - kernel updates often require updates for the kernel-related userspace > (e.g. for udev or the pcmcia tools switch) > > One problem following from this is that people continue to use older > kernels with known security holes because the amount of work for kernel > upgrades is too high. > > These problems follow from the development model. > > The latest stable kernel series without these problems is 2.4, but 2.4 > is becoming more and more obsolete and might e.g. lack driver support > for some recent hardware you want to use. > > Since Andrew and Linus do AFAIK not plan to change the development > model, what about the following for getting a stable kernel series > without leaving the current development model: > > > Kernel 2.6.16 will be the base for a stable series. > [snip]
Why can't this be done by distributors/vendors?
Any vendor is free to branch off at 2.6.<whatever> and then maintain that indefinately. Why create yet-another-stable-branch?
In effect you'd be making 2.6.17+ into a 2.7.x tree and 2.6.16.y would become a 2.6 tree in 2.4.x style, with all the backporting problems and vendor skew that 2.4.x suffered from.
Personally I don't like this proposal. In my oppinion 2.6 + the -stable branch as we have it now works well and people who want userspace & kernel in sync are perfectly free to use vendor kernels (which is also the recommended thing to do for most users as far as I know).
Just my 0.02euro.
-- Jesper Juhl <jesper.juhl@gmail.com> Don't top-post http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/top-post.html Plain text mails only, please http://www.expita.com/nomime.html - 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/
| |