From: Ed Tomlinson <edt@aei.ca>
Organization: me
To: "Massimo Cetra" <mcetra@navynet.it>
Subject: Re: My thoughts on the "new development model"
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 17:19:56 -0400
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Cc: "'Chuck Ebbert'" <76306.1226@compuserve.com>,
       "'Bill Davidsen'" <davidsen@tmr.com>,
       "'William Lee Irwin III'" <wli@holomorphy.com>,
       "'linux-kernel'" <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
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On Tuesday 26 October 2004 07:09, Massimo Cetra wrote:
> > On Tuesday 26 October 2004 01:40, Chuck Ebbert wrote:
> > > Bill Davidsen wrote:
> > > 
> > > > I don't see the need for a development kernel, and it is 
> > desirable 
> > > > to be
> > > > able to run kernel.org kernels.
> > > 
> > >   Problem is, kernel.org 'release' kernels are quite buggy.  For 
> > > example 2.6.9 has a long list of bugs:
> > >
> > >   Sure, the next release will (may?) fix these bugs, but it will 
> > > definitely add a whole set of new ones.
> > 
> 
> > To my mind this just points out the need for a bug fix 
> > branch.   e.g. a
> > branch containing just bug/security fixes against the current 
> > stable kernel.  It might also be worth keeping the branch 
> > active for the n-1 stable kernel too.
> 
> To my mind, we only need to make clear that a stable kernel is a stable
> kernel.
> Not a kernel for experiments.
> 
> To my mind, stock 2.6 kernels are nice for nerds trying patches and
> willing to recompile their kernel once a day. They are not suitable for
> servers. Several times on testing machines, switching from a 2.6 to the
> next one has caused bugs on PCI, acpi, networking and so on.
> 
> The direction is lost. How many patchsets for vanilla kernel exist? 
> 
> Someone has decided that linux must go on desktops as well and
> developing new magnificent features for desktop users is causing serious
> problems to the ones who use linux at work on production servers.
> 
> 2.4 tree is still the best solution for production.
> 2.6 tree is great for gentoo users who like gcc consuming all CPU
> (maxumum respect to gentoo but I prefer debian)

The issue is that Linus _has_ changed the development model.  What we have
now is more flexable and much more responsive to changes.  This does 
lead to stable releases that are not quite a stable as some of the previous
stable series...  This is why I suggest a fix/security branch.  The idea being
that after a month or so of fixes etc it will be a very stable kernel and it will
not have slowed down development.

Ed
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