Re: Need info on kernel philosofy

[Mike Fedyk <mfedyk@matchmail.com>]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2001 at 09:32:34PM +0100, Giorgio A. wrote:
> hi all,
> i know this is gonna be the lamest question of the year, but i didn't found
> a valid answer elsewhere !
> I'm using linux as a sysadmin since slack 3.1, and i've subscribed to this

I started back when 2.0.35 was the latest stable.  I think slack was 3.5
then...

> list about 2 month ago. I'm not a developer, i don't have the knowledge, but
> i like to watch at all of your e-mails since it makes me feel like i'm
> really following the growing of the penguin !

Yep.  You can be very helpful with testing of patches, and documentation
patches...

>Only now i discovered that
> there're 2 trees, the Alans' and the Linus' (here in alphabetical order :-),
> and in these days i saw Linus saying that 2.4.15 is ready to be the result
> of a merge between the two trees. 

Not really.  Alan has been handling the "almost ready for merging" patches
for a while now.  Linus has particular requirements for the patches he
accepts, and Alan helps feed Linus patches the way he likes them.

This has been going on for several years now.

>Now, i wonder if merging the 2 trees is an
> usual thing, so it would be happened also with 2.2 and 2.0 (thing that i
> can't knew, since at that time i wasn't subscribed to LKML), or if i'm
> taking part of a kind of an historycal event, i.e. the fusion of the 2
> kernel trees.

Don't know when 2.2 was placed in Alan's hands.  Know even less about 2.0...

Mike