Re: My thoughts on the "new development model"

Ed Tomlinson
2004-10-26T21:20:24Z

On Tuesday 26 October 2004 07:09, Massimo Cetra wrote:
> > On Tuesday 26 October 2004 01:40, Chuck Ebbert wrote:
> > > Bill Davidsen wrote:
> > >
> > > > I don't see the need for a development kernel, and it is
> > desirable
> > > > to be
> > > > able to run kernel.org kernels.
> > >
> > > Problem is, kernel.org 'release' kernels are quite buggy. For
> > > example 2.6.9 has a long list of bugs:
> > >
> > > Sure, the next release will (may?) fix these bugs, but it will
> > > definitely add a whole set of new ones.
> >
>
> > To my mind this just points out the need for a bug fix
> > branch. e.g. a
> > branch containing just bug/security fixes against the current
> > stable kernel. It might also be worth keeping the branch
> > active for the n-1 stable kernel too.
>
> To my mind, we only need to make clear that a stable kernel is a stable
> kernel.
> Not a kernel for experiments.
>
> To my mind, stock 2.6 kernels are nice for nerds trying patches and
> willing to recompile their kernel once a day. They are not suitable for
> servers. Several times on testing machines, switching from a 2.6 to the
> next one has caused bugs on PCI, acpi, networking and so on.
>
> The direction is lost. How many patchsets for vanilla kernel exist?
>
> Someone has decided that linux must go on desktops as well and
> developing new magnificent features for desktop users is causing serious
> problems to the ones who use linux at work on production servers.
>
> 2.4 tree is still the best solution for production.
> 2.6 tree is great for gentoo users who like gcc consuming all CPU
> (maxumum respect to gentoo but I prefer debian)

The issue is that Linus _has_ changed the development model. What we have
now is more flexable and much more responsive to changes. This does
lead to stable releases that are not quite a stable as some of the previous
stable series... This is why I suggest a fix/security branch. The idea being
that after a month or so of fixes etc it will be a very stable kernel and it will
not have slowed down development.

Ed