Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: Article in Phoronix about loss of performance in 2.6.35 release candidates | From | Mike Galbraith <> | Date | Tue, 01 Jun 2010 07:38:14 +0200 |
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On Mon, 2010-05-31 at 21:22 -0600, Robert Hancock wrote: > On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 9:15 PM, Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> wrote: > > Robert Hancock wrote: > >> > >> On 05/31/2010 05:19 PM, Alex Buell wrote: > >>> > >>> http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=14976 > >>> > >>> Question: Why? > >> > >> Good question.. I guess it would too much to ask of them to try to figure > >> out what area the problem lies in (even to the point of figuring out if it's > >> a CPU or IO-bound problem), or try to bisect, or at least report it to LKML > >> before going to the trouble of creating 5 pages of graphs.. Given the 20x > >> slowdown in some of the benchmarks you'd think it wouldn't be too hard to > >> narrow down. > > > > That's true, but 20x should be too hard for people to detect when they do QA > > after creating a patch, before sending it to LKML in the first place, > > either. If such a regression made it to an -rc1 then it really is kind of a > > big deal. Of course Phoronics running the tests on netbook processors is > > probably a good thing, I doubt many developers and testers are compiling > > kernels on a rig like that, or doing much of anything else demanding. > > > > I guess I would expect people to react with dismay to the fact that such a > > problem made it undetected to rc stage, but perhaps I have too much respect > > for developers. This looks more like "how dare they not keep it quiet and > > just tell us" indignation. In the end I doubt it makes a lot of difference, > > if someone posted to LKML and Slashdot picked it up, be sure it would have > > hit the media anyway. > > > > Should any media keep a defect quiet when they make their living informing > > the readers? I see a lot of glee among Linux users every few days when a new > > Windows bug becomes public. Phoronics tested and reported, why is that less > > honorable than Tom's Hardware telling us a new CPU sucks? > > Of course they shouldn't keep it quiet. The problem is they went and > wrote an article that was basically "OMG HUGE PERFORMANCE LOSS!!1!!" > without reporting the problem to people that can actually do something > about it, and also didn't provide any very useful details like dmesg, > config, etc. that might let someone figure out what's going on.
Shrug. If eggshells land in our omelet, they can make a buck telling people about it. Who cares? If tasty bacon bits land, they'll make a buck on that event. Either way, we get some test coverage.
-Mike
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