From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261912AbVGVDkl (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 Jul 2005 23:40:41 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261960AbVGVDkl (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 Jul 2005 23:40:41 -0400 Received: from linuxwireless.org.ve.carpathiahost.net ([66.117.45.234]:36323 "EHLO linuxwireless.org.ve.carpathiahost.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261943AbVGVDki (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 Jul 2005 23:40:38 -0400 Message-ID: <42E05CAB.9020703@linuxwireless.org> Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 21:40:43 -0500 From: Alejandro Bonilla User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050513 Debian/1.7.8-1 X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: =?windows-1252?Q?Martin_MOKREJ=8A?= CC: Mark Nipper , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Giving developers clue how many testers verified certain kernel version References: <42E04D11.20005@ribosome.natur.cuni.cz> <20050722021046.GB21727@king.bitgnome.net> <42E05C17.2000305@ribosome.natur.cuni.cz> In-Reply-To: <42E05C17.2000305@ribosome.natur.cuni.cz> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Martin MOKREJŠ wrote: > Hi, > > Mark Nipper wrote: > >> I have a different idea along these lines but not using >> bugzilla. A nice system for tracking usage of certain components >> might be made by having people register using a certain e-mail >> address and then submitting their .config as they try out new >> versions of kernels. > > > Nice idea, but I still think it is of interrest on what hardware > was it tested. Maybe also 'dmesg' output would help a bit, but > I still don't know how you'd find that I have _this_ motherboard > instead of another. > I'm a simple Linux user that normally likes to test as much things as posible. This is what I would do: I would make a Summary of the ChangeLog that was done to the kernel, and from there encourage people to test those parts. The worst part that I face against Linux is that I don't know C enough like to understand what the patch that someone sent will really do. A user understandable ChangeLog so that people can test those changed points would be great. And if those changes could have an explanation on how users could troubleshoot the change, then it would be fairly awesome. I have been subscribed here for more than a year already, and I have barely understood a couple of changes that have been done to Drivers and to the kernel itself. How can I make sure that the change will really work better for me? How does one check if hotplug is working better than before? How do I test the fact that a performance issue seen in the driver is now fixed for me or most of users? How do I get back to a bugzilla and tell that there is a bug somewhere when one can't really know if that is the way it works but is simply ugly, or if there is really a bug? My point is that a user like me, can't really get back to this mailing list and say "hey, since 2.6.13-rc1, my PCI bus is having an additional 1ms of latency" We don't really have a process to follow and then be able to say "ahha, so this is different" and then report the problem, even if we can't fix it because of our C and kernel skills. How do we know that something is OK or wrong? just by the fact that it works or not, it doesn't mean like is OK. There has to be a process for any user to be able to verify and study a problem. We don't have that yet. .Alejandro