Re: Linux 2.4 future

[Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@conectiva.com.br>]

Em Tue, Dec 02, 2003 at 08:38:03AM -0500, Ed Sweetman escreveu:
> Ionut Georgescu wrote:
> >Because new hardware requires newest kernel, and neither I, nor the
> >majority of the users out there have the knowledge to 'forward' apply
> >patches.
> >
> >Even if 2.4 is phasing out, the process has just begun and it will last
> >a lot until 2.6 will be ready for production systems.
> >
> >We are not talking about a fancy, experimental feature. We are talking
> >about a mature, serious project, that has been traveling for 3 years
> >along the 2.4 kernel and with even more years of testing and research
> >behind. I find it just pitty for the linux kernel not to include it.
> >
> >When going to a conference, you don't present the brand new stuff you
> >have just computed or measured the night before, because you just can't
> >know if it is correct or not. Instead, you will present older, but
> >mature work, that you can swear on. The same with the 2.6 kernel.
> >Everybody is pushing it in front, but no one is using it for production
> >systems. XFS and 2.4 are, even together, old, mature work, that anybody
> >would 'present' anywhere.
> >
> >Regards,
> >Ionut
> 
> 
> The point was, the patch is perfectly and easily usable the way it is. 
> There stands to be no reason to make it part of the vanilla kernel other 
> than a very slight convenience factor for a small minority of users. 
> Tosatti thinks that that versus changes to this stable kernel that touch 
> common code are unacceptable.  Despite the maturity of the project, it 
> just doesn't make sense to include it in the vanilla kernel, it would be 
> a disservice to the rest of the users of 2.4.x kernels that do so for 
> stability, not only in the not crashing sense, but also in the code-base 
>  sense. And the number of users who don't use xfs so greatly outnumber 
> the users that do that it's a mute point for Tosatti.

<humour>
Thanks for reading my mind and writing it down 8)
</humour>

- Arnaldo