From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261184AbUGXQEl (ORCPT ); Sat, 24 Jul 2004 12:04:41 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261239AbUGXQEl (ORCPT ); Sat, 24 Jul 2004 12:04:41 -0400 Received: from parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk ([195.92.249.252]:29367 "EHLO www.linux.org.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261184AbUGXQEj (ORCPT ); Sat, 24 Jul 2004 12:04:39 -0400 Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 11:24:10 -0300 From: Marcelo Tosatti To: Jonathan Corbet Cc: szonyi calin , Paul Jackson , Adrian Bunk , akpm@osdl.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: New dev model (was [PATCH] delete devfs) Message-ID: <20040724142410.GA3009@dmt.cyclades> References: <20040723081637.93875.qmail@web52903.mail.yahoo.com> <20040723122127.16468.qmail@lwn.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040723122127.16468.qmail@lwn.net> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 06:21:27AM -0600, Jonathan Corbet wrote: > > So now the world is divided in gods (i.e distributions) and we, > > mere mortals who should pray to the gods to give us a stable > > kernel ? > > This seems to be where a lot of the misunderstanding is. Did anybody > notice just how divergent the distributors' 2.4 (and prior) kernels were > from the mainline? If you wanted a kernel with that level of features > and stability, you had to get it from them - or apply hundreds of > patches yourself. > > One of the goals of the process now is to get those distributor patches > into the mainline quickly. My expectation is that the mainline kernel > will be far closer to what the distributors ship than it has been in a > long time, and the mainline will be more stable for it. Just the > opposite of what a lot of people are saying. Well, back in v2.4 "hot-stop", most of the patches merged into distro's kernels were not "trustable" enough to be merged into v2.4 mainline, and I had no capability of reviewing them myself and make a good enough judgment of whether they should be included or not. Another point I had against merging some of those patches was that most of them were targeted at "enterprise" users and benefit almost only them (eg finer-grained locking, etc). To resume, I prefered to be more "conservative". Of course, fortunately Andrew is much more capable of doing judgements on "trustability" of patches and so forth. Obviously its a good thing to try to keep the differences between distro's kernels and mainline kernels small, and Andrew is targetting that.