Re: Too soon for stable release?

Re: Too soon for stable release?

[Larry McVoy]

On Sat, Nov 29, 2003 at 06:49:16PM +0100, Tim Cambrant wrote:
> I am sorry if this offends someone or if I'm totally on the wrong track
> here, but it seems odd to actually call the Beaver On Detox "stable",
> considering the amount of misc. problems people have been having the
> last week with -test11. 

The "stable" series of the kernel is never really stable for a while. 
A better way to think of it is as "that place where things become stable
by refusing to take any new changes except bug fixes".  

The news media hasn't picked up on this yet, they seem to think that
2.6.0 is something that will be useful.  It won't be, there will be a
period of months during which things stablize and then you'll see the
distros pick up the release.  I don't remember where it was exactly
(2.4.18?) but Red Hat waited quite a while before switching to 2.4
from 2.2.  This is normal and it works out quite well in practice.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: Too soon for stable release?

[Russell King]

On Sat, Nov 29, 2003 at 09:01:04AM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> The news media hasn't picked up on this yet, they seem to think that
> 2.6.0 is something that will be useful.  It won't be, there will be a
> period of months during which things stablize and then you'll see the
> distros pick up the release.  I don't remember where it was exactly
> (2.4.18?) but Red Hat waited quite a while before switching to 2.4
> from 2.2.  This is normal and it works out quite well in practice.

Red Hat did a 2.4.2 release which was 2.4.2 + a lot of stability changes.
IIRC, RH7.x was based on 2.4.7, with updates to 2.4.9, 2.4.18 and finally
2.4.20-based kernels.  However, I also seem to remember each of these had
a fair number of patches applied.

I'm sure Arjan will correct me if I got the above wrong.

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:  2.6 PCMCIA      - http://pcmcia.arm.linux.org.uk/
                 2.6 Serial core

Re: Too soon for stable release?

[William Lee Irwin III]

On Sat, Nov 29, 2003 at 06:49:16PM +0100, Tim Cambrant wrote:
>> I am sorry if this offends someone or if I'm totally on the wrong track
>> here, but it seems odd to actually call the Beaver On Detox "stable",
>> considering the amount of misc. problems people have been having the
>> last week with -test11. 

On Sat, Nov 29, 2003 at 09:01:04AM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> The "stable" series of the kernel is never really stable for a while. 
> A better way to think of it is as "that place where things become stable
> by refusing to take any new changes except bug fixes".  
> The news media hasn't picked up on this yet, they seem to think that
> 2.6.0 is something that will be useful.  It won't be, there will be a
> period of months during which things stablize and then you'll see the
> distros pick up the release.  I don't remember where it was exactly
> (2.4.18?) but Red Hat waited quite a while before switching to 2.4
> from 2.2.  This is normal and it works out quite well in practice.

ISTR something about 2.4.9 lasting far, far, far, far, far, far longer
than it should have... and it's not dead yet!!!

2.6 is likely to buck this trend anyway.

-- wli

Re: Too soon for stable release?

[Arjan van de Ven]

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On Sat, 2003-11-29 at 18:11, Russell King wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 29, 2003 at 09:01:04AM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > The news media hasn't picked up on this yet, they seem to think that
> > 2.6.0 is something that will be useful.  It won't be, there will be a
> > period of months during which things stablize and then you'll see the
> > distros pick up the release.  I don't remember where it was exactly
> > (2.4.18?) but Red Hat waited quite a while before switching to 2.4
> > from 2.2.  This is normal and it works out quite well in practice.
> 
> Red Hat did a 2.4.2 release which was 2.4.2 + a lot of stability changes.

which was basically a 2.4.4-pre 

> IIRC, RH7.2 was based on 2.4.7,

2.4.7 lived for half a day but the VM of 2.4.7 was so bad we had to go
to 2.4.9 immediately..

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Too soon for stable release?

[Tim Cambrant]

I am sorry if this offends someone or if I'm totally on the wrong track
here, but it seems odd to actually call the Beaver On Detox "stable",
considering the amount of misc. problems people have been having the
last week with -test11. Since you are in schedule, a -test12 with the
bugs fixed might be a better idea, don't you think?

Since I'm not a coder, and havn't had any previous kernel development
experince, I might not be the one to suggest such a thing, but I really
don't see a reason to be hasty with the release, and end up with a
whole bunch of users having problems.

The weeks Linus suggested we would wait before releasing the final
2.6.0-kernel could be a perfect time to implement the fixes that would
be needed. Test11 is working perfectly for me, but you can clearly see
that many people are having problems.

-- 
Tim Cambrant <tim@cambrant.com> 
GPG KeyID 0x59518702
Fingerprint: 14FE 03AE C2D1 072A 87D0  BC4D FA9E 02D8 5951 8702

Re: Too soon for stable release?

[Tim Cambrant]

On Sat, Nov 29, 2003 at 09:01:04AM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> The "stable" series of the kernel is never really stable for a while. 
> A better way to think of it is as "that place where things become stable
> by refusing to take any new changes except bug fixes".  

Oh, that explains things then. Since I've only been using stable kernels,
I've got no experience with how the kernel releases really work, and in
what order the versions arrive. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

-- 
Tim Cambrant <tim@cambrant.com> 
GPG KeyID 0x59518702
Fingerprint: 14FE 03AE C2D1 072A 87D0  BC4D FA9E 02D8 5951 8702

Re: Too soon for stable release?

[Stan Bubrouski]

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On Sat, 2003-11-29 at 12:42, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> On Sat, 2003-11-29 at 18:11, Russell King wrote:
> > On Sat, Nov 29, 2003 at 09:01:04AM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > > The news media hasn't picked up on this yet, they seem to think that
> > > 2.6.0 is something that will be useful.  It won't be, there will be a
> > > period of months during which things stablize and then you'll see the
> > > distros pick up the release.  I don't remember where it was exactly
> > > (2.4.18?) but Red Hat waited quite a while before switching to 2.4
> > > from 2.2.  This is normal and it works out quite well in practice.
> > 
> > Red Hat did a 2.4.2 release which was 2.4.2 + a lot of stability changes.
> 
> which was basically a 2.4.4-pre 
> 
> > IIRC, RH7.2 was based on 2.4.7,
> 
> 2.4.7 lived for half a day but the VM of 2.4.7 was so bad we had to go
> to 2.4.9 immediately..

I remember trying stock 2.4.7...it was the first 2.4.x kernel I tried
and I wasn't all that impressed (and i had a plethora of problems).  I
didn't like 2.4.9 much either to be honest, but it was a lot better than
earlier 2.4.x releases.  2.4.x is where I learned exactly what Larry
stated earlier in the thread about stable kernels taking a while to
actually stabilize.  But when they do, the result is quite worth it. 
And for the record, I'm finding 2.6-test kernels more stable than early
2.4.x release kernels, so I think you guys have a come a long way and
done an awesome job.  I think 2.6 is going to be a kernel that blows
away people who whined about 2.4s desktop performance.

Kudos guys for a job well done,

Stan

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Re: Too soon for stable release?

[Mike Fedyk]

On Sat, Nov 29, 2003 at 09:16:46AM -0800, William Lee Irwin III wrote:
> ISTR something about 2.4.9 lasting far, far, far, far, far, far longer
> than it should have... and it's not dead yet!!!

Which was the last one to use the riel-pre-rmap VM.  It also got most of the
updates and was more like 2.4.14 but without the new VM.

2.4.14 was one of the first reliable kernels for me.