Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Sun, 23 Mar 2003 17:43:49 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Sun, 23 Mar 2003 17:43:49 -0500 Received: from franka.aracnet.com ([216.99.193.44]:2004 "EHLO franka.aracnet.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Sun, 23 Mar 2003 17:43:47 -0500 Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 14:54:40 -0800 From: "Martin J. Bligh" To: Jeff Garzik cc: James Bourne , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Robert Love , Martin Mares , Alan Cox , Stephan von Krawczynski , szepe@pinerecords.com, arjanv@redhat.com, Pavel Machek Subject: Re: Ptrace hole / Linux 2.2.25 Message-ID: <1240000.1048460079@[10.10.2.4]> In-Reply-To: <3E7E335C.2050509@pobox.com> References: <20030323193457.GA14750@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz> <200303231938.h2NJcAq14927@devserv.devel.redhat.com> <20030323194423.GC14750@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz> <1048448838.1486.12.camel@phantasy.awol.org> <20030323195606.GA15904@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz> <1048450211.1486.19.camel@phantasy.awol.org> <402760000.1048451441@[10.10.2.4]> <20030323203628.GA16025@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz> <920000.1048456387@[10.10.2.4]> <3E7E335C.2050509@pobox.com> X-Mailer: Mulberry/2.2.1 (Linux/x86) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2256 Lines: 47 > akpm has suggested something like this in the past. I respectfully > disagree. > > The 2.4 kernel will not benefit from constant churn of backporting core > kernel changes like a new scheduler. We need to let it settle, simply > get it stable, and concentrate on fixing key problems in 2.6. Otherwise > you will never have a stable 2.4 tree, and it will look suspiciously more > and more like 2.6 as time goes by. Constantly breaking working > configurations and changing core behaviors is _not_ the way to go for 2.4. > > I see 2.4 O(1) scheduler and similar features as _pain_ brought on the > vendors by themselves (and their customers). O(1) sched may be a bad example ... how about the fact that mainline VM is totally unstable? Witness, for instance, the buffer_head stuff. Fixes for that have been around for ages. The real philosophical question is "what is mainline 2.4 _for_"? > Surely it is better to concentrate developer time and mindshare on making > 2.6 sane? Agreed, but all we're doing now is burning lots of time on backporting stuff from 2.5 into each separate distro base, and each distro fixing things independantly in their own tree (eg O(1) scheduler). I don't see that as constructive ... customers will not stagnate, and I don't see the point in 2.4 mainline doing that either. It's now got to the point where the testing people don't even bother testing mainline 2.4 because they know it's horribly broken, and is not getting fixed, so there's no point. I think that's sad. Instead, we test umpteen different vendor kernels, and try to apply the same fixes to each of those, which is a pain in the butt, becasue they won't merge cleanly because the trees are so far diverged. People running non-vendor kernels are generally running 2.4-aa or 2.4-ac, etc, etc. All burnt thrash time. Yes, the real answer is to get 2.6 out the door, and move people onto it. But that will take a little while ... would be nice to get some way to alleviate the pain in the meantime. M. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/