Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262511AbUKDXyr (ORCPT ); Thu, 4 Nov 2004 18:54:47 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262507AbUKDXxP (ORCPT ); Thu, 4 Nov 2004 18:53:15 -0500 Received: from fw.osdl.org ([65.172.181.6]:4264 "EHLO mail.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262506AbUKDXwf (ORCPT ); Thu, 4 Nov 2004 18:52:35 -0500 Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 15:52:21 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds To: Adam Heath cc: Chris Wedgwood , Christoph Hellwig , Timothy Miller , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: support of older compilers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <41894779.10706@techsource.com> <20041103211353.GA24084@infradead.org> <20041103233029.GA16982@taniwha.stupidest.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1761 Lines: 43 On Thu, 4 Nov 2004, Adam Heath wrote: > > But slowness doesn't mean wrong, just by being slow. No. "Right" and "wrong" have _nothing_ to do with anything. he only thing that matters is "what is the best tool". And yes, performance _is_ an issue in selecting the best tool. It's not the only one, but it's a major one. You said so yourself when you claimed people should just buy faster hardware. Again, the machine you use is just another tool. Why should you buy a faster machine if performance doesn't matter? I don't understand why you first dismiss performance, and then go on to ignore all the _other_ issues I told you about too. And your argument about "things will get fixed if you use the newer version" is also not actually true. First off, if it ain't broke in the older version, then things _literally_ will get fixed by not upgrading in the first place. And telling a developer "I'm not using your new version because it sucks compared to the old one" is actually a perfectly valid thing to do, and is likely to be _more_ motivational for the developer to get it fixed than having users that just follow the newest version like stupid sheep. There are people out there using Linux-2.0. There are probably people even using linux-1.2. And hey, that's OK. For older machines it may really be the right choice, especially if they are still doing the same thing they did several years ago. The notion that you somehow "have to" upgrade to the newest version of software is BOGUS. Linus - 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/