Re: My thoughts on the "new development model"

Mathieu Segaud
2004-10-26T19:03:19Z

Paolo Ciarrocchi <paolo.ciarrocchi@gmail.com> disait dernièrement que :

>> To my mind, we only need to make clear that a stable kernel is a stable
>> kernel.
>> Not a kernel for experiments.
>
> 2.6 is not an experimental kernel. Not at all.

clearly do I agree.

>> 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.
>
> I don't understand what you mean here.
> Did you report these problems to lkml ?
> It's the firts time I heard about this kind of problems.

I will just add this:
we, young students from all horizons here at the ENS Cachan, run a huge network
(~900 hosts), with 4 important servers, all running 2.6. And my conclusion, as
I cannot speak for my fellow colleagues but think most would agree, is that
these servers behave *a* *lot* *better* since we switch. We had problems first
but they were mostly due to the switch to Debian testing distribution (from
old Woody).
Also we have a 4-way (bi-Xeon with HT) running 2.6.7, playing proxy squid to
serve our entire network, up since 131 days, with no problems; and the 2.6.x
switch was more a blessing than a pain in the butt, since 2.4.x just let him
play more and more in system time.... Thanks to sched domains and _real_ HT
scheduling support.

And these are production servers, no more no less.

>> The direction is lost. How many patchsets for vanilla kernel exist?
>
> It was the same for 2.4. And that's not _BAD_, is _GOOD_.

yup -mm, -ac existed in 2.4 series.
and do not forget that -mm series are a stage for patches aiming mainline,
not a special patchset among others.

>> 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.
>
> Who ?

Users decided, I guess :)

>> 2.4 tree is still the best solution for production.

I do not think so, I think it depends on the hardware you bear.

>> 2.6 tree is great for gentoo users who like gcc consuming all CPU
>> (maxumum respect to gentoo but I prefer debian)

huh ? what's the point ????
Our 2.6 servers run Debian testing with a little trouble.

Best regards, and hurray for Linux 2.6 series !!

Mathieu

--
"One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic
pictures."

George W. Bush
January 3, 2000
Quoted in U.S. News & World Report.