From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754193Ab0FADPO (ORCPT ); Mon, 31 May 2010 23:15:14 -0400 Received: from mail.tmr.com ([64.65.253.246]:51415 "EHLO partygirl.tmr.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753837Ab0FADPM (ORCPT ); Mon, 31 May 2010 23:15:12 -0400 Message-ID: <4C047B38.9050506@tmr.com> Date: Mon, 31 May 2010 23:15:04 -0400 From: Bill Davidsen User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.21) Gecko/20090507 Fedora/1.1.16-1.fc9 NOT Firefox/3.0.11 SeaMonkey/1.1.16 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Robert Hancock CC: alex.buell@munted.org.uk, Mailing Lists - Kernel Developers , Dave Airlie Subject: Re: Article in Phoronix about loss of performance in 2.6.35 release candidates References: <1275347969.29006.5.camel@lithium.local.net> <4C0448B5.7090904@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <4C0448B5.7090904@gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Robert Hancock wrote: > On 05/31/2010 05:19 PM, Alex Buell wrote: >> http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=14976 >> >> Question: Why? > > Good question.. I guess it would too much to ask of them to try to > figure out what area the problem lies in (even to the point of figuring > out if it's a CPU or IO-bound problem), or try to bisect, or at least > report it to LKML before going to the trouble of creating 5 pages of > graphs.. Given the 20x slowdown in some of the benchmarks you'd think it > wouldn't be too hard to narrow down. That's true, but 20x should be too hard for people to detect when they do QA after creating a patch, before sending it to LKML in the first place, either. If such a regression made it to an -rc1 then it really is kind of a big deal. Of course Phoronics running the tests on netbook processors is probably a good thing, I doubt many developers and testers are compiling kernels on a rig like that, or doing much of anything else demanding. I guess I would expect people to react with dismay to the fact that such a problem made it undetected to rc stage, but perhaps I have too much respect for developers. This looks more like "how dare they not keep it quiet and just tell us" indignation. In the end I doubt it makes a lot of difference, if someone posted to LKML and Slashdot picked it up, be sure it would have hit the media anyway. Should any media keep a defect quiet when they make their living informing the readers? I see a lot of glee among Linux users every few days when a new Windows bug becomes public. Phoronics tested and reported, why is that less honorable than Tom's Hardware telling us a new CPU sucks? -- Bill Davidsen "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the machinations of the wicked." - from Slashdot