Re: Debian Kernels was: 2.6.0test9 Reiserfs boot time "buffer layer error at fs/buffer.c:431"

[Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com>]

Pavel Machek wrote:

>Hi!
>
>  
>
>>>There was a bug in one of the released Debian kernels, and do you think this
>>>hasn't happened with Redhat, SuSe, or Mandrake?  Just because Debian is
>>>completely OSS and maintained mostly by unpaid volunteers, that shouldn't
>>>keep them from having a seperate tree like everyone else.
>>>      
>>>
>>Just to avoid a false impression: I am in no way against debian project nor do
>>I say there is anything specifically bad about it. I am generally disliking
>>distros' ideas of having _own_ kernels. Commercial companies like SuSE or Red
>>Hat may find arguments for that which are commercially backed, debian on the
>>other hand can hardly argue commercially. From the community point of view it
>>is just nonsense. It means more work and less useable feedback.
>>Bugs is distro kernels are (always) the sole fault of their respective
>>maintainers because they actively decided _not_ to follow the mainstream and
>>made bogus patches. Why waste the appreciated work of (unpaid) debian
>>volunteers in this area? There are tons of other work left with far more
>>relevance for users than bleeding edge kernel patches...
>>    
>>
>
>
>Debian is distibution; distributions are _expected_ to fix bugs (etc)
>in their packages.
>  
>
not in their packages, but in their packaging, and to submit bug fixes 
to the maintainers.


>If distribution had all packages unmodified, it would be useless...
>  
>
not at all.

>So I'd expect all distros to have at least some changes in their
>kernel... the same way I expect distros to have some patches in
>midnight commander etc.
>
>Of course it is good to keep the .diff as small as possible.
>								Pavel
>  
>
I just want to say that I would happily do 10 times as much work to keep 
things working for debian, but not using the vanilla kernel is a mistake 
for debian, just as changing, say, xmms without involving the xmms 
maintainer would be a mistake and more likely to cause bugs for users.  
Just because SuSE and RedHat have lots of money doesn't mean that debian 
should ape their mistakes.

-- 
Hans