Re: RFC: Starting a stable kernel series off the 2.6 kernel

Jesper Juhl
2005-12-03T14:29:56Z

On 12/3/05, Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> wrote:
> The current kernel development model is pretty good for people who
> always want to use or offer their costumers the maximum amount of the
> latest bugs^Wfeatures without having to resort on additional patches for
> them.
>
> Problems of the current development model from a user's point of view
> are:
> - many regressions in every new release
> - kernel updates often require updates for the kernel-related userspace
> (e.g. for udev or the pcmcia tools switch)
>
> One problem following from this is that people continue to use older
> kernels with known security holes because the amount of work for kernel
> upgrades is too high.
>
> These problems follow from the development model.
>
> The latest stable kernel series without these problems is 2.4, but 2.4
> is becoming more and more obsolete and might e.g. lack driver support
> for some recent hardware you want to use.
>
> Since Andrew and Linus do AFAIK not plan to change the development
> model, what about the following for getting a stable kernel series
> without leaving the current development model:
>
>
> Kernel 2.6.16 will be the base for a stable series.
>
[snip]

Why can't this be done by distributors/vendors?

Any vendor is free to branch off at 2.6.<whatever> and then maintain
that indefinately. Why create yet-another-stable-branch?

In effect you'd be making 2.6.17+ into a 2.7.x tree and 2.6.16.y would
become a 2.6 tree in 2.4.x style, with all the backporting problems
and vendor skew that 2.4.x suffered from.

Personally I don't like this proposal. In my oppinion 2.6 + the
-stable branch as we have it now works well and people who want
userspace & kernel in sync are perfectly free to use vendor kernels
(which is also the recommended thing to do for most users as far as I
know).

Just my 0.02euro.

--
Jesper Juhl <jesper.juhl@gmail.com>
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