Thanks Roland,
On Tuesday 26 June 2007 21:03, Roland Kuhn wrote:
> On 26 Jun 2007, at 16:37, Zoltán HUBERT wrote:
> > Whatever "stable" means.
>
> What you mean by "stable" pretty much excludes any
> serious development, without which the Linux kernel would
> very soon be obsolete. If you want a stable system, then
> don't change it.
This is a problem. Do you remember that kernel vulnerability
in 2.4 that made the Debian servers be attacked ? And
mplayerhq.hu too if I remember right ? So what are we
supposed to do with a perfect and optimised system, running
smoothly, with an older kernel where some nasty bug is
discovered ?
In MacOS X, you click "System Update" and you're done.
In Linux, I expect "download the newest stable kernel,
configure, compile, install, reboot".
If I have to rely on the distribution to help me it spoils
the whole benefit of open source. I don't trust Novell or
RedHat or Google more than Microsoft or Apple. You "kernel
developpers" are the keepers of the flame.
> If you update to a kernel which is 2.5
> years newer, you simply cannot have stability, because
> that would mean stagnation, aka "death".
PostScript is a very old language yet we all still use it
every day. HTML is a very old "thing" and we use it
every-day, and it's still compatible with newer and older
stuff.
I'm a system engineer, and a "stable" system is one where
the interfaces are stable. Individual components can
change, and do change, but if you change fundamental
interfaces it is not the same system. Of course I
understand that "sometimes" fundamental things have to
change, but here "sometimes" is the keyword. If its
"anytime" it simply is no stable system. And yes, designing
and maintaining interfaces is a very difficult job.
I don't remember how it was during 2.4 and before, but I
find it very suspicious that SuSE and RedHat only provide
2.6.10 and 2.6.9 for their OS. It looks as if THEY didn't
trust 2.6.x to be a replacement to 2.6.y
And as I understand it, this is (was ?) the whole point of
stable/development kernels. "We" can trust a newer stable
kernel to be a drop-in replacement for an older stable
kernel (from the same series), while development kernels
need time to stabilise with the new whizz-bang-pfouit stuff
that you all so nicely add.
Are the good ol' days lost in nostalgia ?
bye
Zoltán
--
________________________
Zoltan
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