Quote of the week [LWN.net]

Quote of the week

Posted Dec 16, 2004 18:02 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646)
In reply to: Quote of the week by mrshiny
Parent article: Quote of the week

You seem to miss elanthis point. This has nothing to do with binary modules. This has to do with upgrades of GPLed modules (e.g., ipw2100 WLAN drivers for Centrino chips, or RAID device support, etc). Such upgrades are done by distributions not as patches, but only from version to version. And no -- I don't want to upgrade my systems every three months; and actually also not every year, also I'm forced to it.

Having such a ridiculous short backward compatibility time frame (or even none at all) is one of the very big disadvantages of Linux, compared to proprietary operating systems like Solaris, AIX, or Win32-flavored ones.

The current kernel development approach is botched, from a user's point of view. Not for a developer, mind you; but for end-users.

Joachim

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Quote of the week

Posted Dec 16, 2004 19:30 UTC (Thu) by gregkh (subscriber, #8) [Link]

No one is forcing you to not use Solaris, AIX, or Win32, if you like the way they have pseudo-backwards compatibility support (I say pseudo, as it's not always true, and there are often lots of catches to how it is implemented.)

As for end-users, stick with a distro that provides a recent, up-to-date kernel, with full support for a wide range of devices, if that is important to you. Debian and Gentoo both provide this, as does Fedora.

It's all a matter of what is important to you, as a user. So base what you use, on those decisions (enterprise kernel vs. Debian bleeding-edge.)

Also remember, Linux supports more devices than any other operating system, "out of the box." And the fact that we do do this, shows that something must be working properly with this model :)

Quote of the week

Posted Dec 16, 2004 21:00 UTC (Thu) by mrshiny (subscriber, #4266) [Link]

Linux may have more drivers that work "out of the box" than any other OS, but it has nearly no devices that work after the box is open. On all the commercial operating systems you can buy a device, install it, and install the driver, and the device works, even if the device was built long after that OS was released.