Re: New Linux Development Model

[caszonyi@rdslink.ro]

On Wed, 9 Nov 2005, jerome lacoste wrote:

> On 11/9/05, caszonyi@rdslink.ro <caszonyi@rdslink.ro> wrote:
> [...]
> > There are other reasons for using a new kernel. One of them is
> > interactivity. In the days of 2.4 one could achieve decent interactivity
> > for the desktop using preempt and low latency patches. For 2.6
> > interactivity was a real issue (possibly because of the new development
> > model).
>
> I don't get it. You say that with 2.4 + patches you had good
> interactivity and with 2.6 you don't? Why did you switch then?

Because i like to test new kernels. On 2.4 I run the vanila kernel and a 
test kernel. When something went wrong on a test kernel was always a 
stable kernel to use.
2.6 looks a lot like 2.5. New features are added very quickly without much 
testing. Of course there is Andrew's -mm tree but this one sometimes 
is too broken.
For me linux looks now like it has one unstable tree (2.6) which is 
something like -ac was in days of 2.4 and  -mm was in the days of 2.4 
-2.5 and -mm which looks like it became very unstable.
This is what i saw ok lkml (maybe my view is distorted).
I'll stop ranting and try both of them because i have some bugs to report.

> > > > And why should dirstribution makers always backport new security fixes ?
> > >
> > > Because they want to ensure maximum stability. That's what users are
> > > (sometimes) paying for.
> >
> > Maximum stability of what ? If the distribution kernels are based on
> > vanila kernel (i.e. are based on unstable kernel) how stable will they be
> > ?
>
> Maximum stability of the kernel they deliver. When you fix a
> vulnerability, you fix a vulnerability. You don't just happen to add a
> new bunch of features, and a new bunch of bugs. Otherwise you are
> going to piss off your users a lot.

That's what's happening on 2.6. Every 2.6.x release is different.
The 2.6.x.y kernels sometimes are almost no different from 2.6.x


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