Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758713AbXHEHhi (ORCPT ); Sun, 5 Aug 2007 03:37:38 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1754999AbXHEHhb (ORCPT ); Sun, 5 Aug 2007 03:37:31 -0400 Received: from mx2.mail.elte.hu ([157.181.151.9]:47652 "EHLO mx2.mail.elte.hu" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754952AbXHEHha (ORCPT ); Sun, 5 Aug 2007 03:37:30 -0400 Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2007 09:37:09 +0200 From: Ingo Molnar To: Alan Cox Cc: J??rn Engel , Jeff Garzik , Linus Torvalds , Peter Zijlstra , linux-mm@kvack.org, Linux Kernel Mailing List , miklos@szeredi.hu, akpm@linux-foundation.org, neilb@suse.de, dgc@sgi.com, tomoki.sekiyama.qu@hitachi.com, nikita@clusterfs.com, trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no, yingchao.zhou@gmail.com, richard@rsk.demon.co.uk, david@lang.hm Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/23] per device dirty throttling -v8 Message-ID: <20070805073709.GA6325@elte.hu> References: <20070804163733.GA31001@elte.hu> <46B4C0A8.1000902@garzik.org> <20070804191205.GA24723@lazybastard.org> <20070804192130.GA25346@elte.hu> <20070804211156.5f600d80@the-village.bc.nu> <20070804202830.GA4538@elte.hu> <20070804210351.GA9784@elte.hu> <20070804225121.5c7b66e0@the-village.bc.nu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20070804225121.5c7b66e0@the-village.bc.nu> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.14 (2007-02-12) X-ELTE-VirusStatus: clean X-ELTE-SpamScore: 1.0 X-ELTE-SpamLevel: s X-ELTE-SpamCheck: no X-ELTE-SpamVersion: ELTE 2.0 X-ELTE-SpamCheck-Details: score=1.0 required=5.9 tests=BAYES_50 autolearn=no SpamAssassin version=3.0.3 1.0 BAYES_50 BODY: Bayesian spam probability is 40 to 60% [score: 0.5000] Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1418 Lines: 31 * Alan Cox wrote: > > it's also perhaps the most stupid Unix design idea of all times. > > Unix is really nice and well done, but think about this a bit: > > Think about the user for a moment instead. > > Do things right. The job of the kernel is not to "correct" for > distribution policy decisions. The distributions need to change > policy. You do that by showing the distributions the numbers. you try to put the blame into distribution makers' shoes but in reality, had the kernel stepped forward with a neat .config option sooner (combined with a neat boot option as well to turn it off), we'd have had noatime systems 10 years ago. A new entry into relnotes and done. It's _much less_ of a compatibility impact than many of the changes that happen in a new distro release. (new glibc, new compiler, new kernel) Distro makers did not dare to do this sooner because some kernel developers came forward with these mostly bogus arguments ... The impact of atime is far better understood by the kernel community, so it is the responsibility of _us_ to signal such things towards distributors, not the other way around. Ingo - 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/