Re: Linux 2.6.16.30-pre1

Jean Delvare
2006-09-23T21:20:51Z

Hi Lee,

> On Sat, 2006-09-23 at 22:49 +0200, Jean Delvare wrote:
> > I will not use 2.6.16.y with its current rules, for sure, and I doubt
> > any distribution will. Wasn't the whole point of 2.6.16.y to serve as
> > a common base between several distributions?
>
> I would not expect distros to be interested in a 2.6 tree that does not
> add support for new devices. Isn't new hardware support one of the main
> areas where distros routinely get ahead of mainline?

It really depends on the distribution, and even more of the specific
product. I know for a fact that Suse has no interest in supporting
additional hardware in the saa7134 driver for SLES10, for example. I
suspect that distributions only backport hardware support when a
customer asks for it, and they have some in-house knowledge to do it
safely.

My original understanding was that 2.6.16.y was meant to be a common
tree between different distributions and products, containing only the
unquestionable fixes - i.e. security, data corruption and other oopses,
in the -stable spirit - and then different distributions would add their
own patches on top of it as they see fit.

--
Jean Delvare