Kernel bugs: out of control? [LWN.net]

Kernel bugs: out of control?

Posted May 11, 2006 11:43 UTC (Thu) by lacostej (subscriber, #2760)
Parent article: Kernel bugs: out of control?

I am an optimist kind of guy. I believe the community has the mean to push the limits of software development. If that means have an somewhat less stable kernel, it's OK. No-one's forcing you to upgrade. Things will improve little by little. In the end everybody will gain of having the release process the way it is today. I truly believe in release early release often.

One day, we may be able to have machines with multiple systems that allow us to boot concurrently 2 systems on the same hardware. This allowing us to check the quality of the newer releases. We may also have a real P2P distributed kernel testing process, allowing to detect regression and issues faster.

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Kernel bugs: out of control?

Posted May 11, 2006 11:58 UTC (Thu) by malor (subscriber, #2973) [Link]

Well, actually, yes they are. They won't do bugfixes after two months, so if Linux develops a security issue, I _have to_ upgrade to get it fixed. Debian only supports a few kernels, and the only one that works for me in all situations is the one in unstable. Yes, RHEL does a good job of backporting security fixes, but I don't _run_ RHEL.

With the fixed holes come new features, with new holes of their own, forcing yet more upgrades. And it requires constant admin attention, to see if something in the latest round of new features is going to be a security issue in the target environment. Admin attention is expensive; the software may be free, but this dev system is still costly. It was much easier when you could schedule a block of time every year or two to learn new features.. now it's forcibly done on an interrupt basis. That's very inconvenient, and very problematic for time management and security.

Kernel bugs: out of control?

Posted May 12, 2006 15:45 UTC (Fri) by snitm (subscriber, #4031) [Link]

You seem like a high maintenance individual ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H environment deserving of RHEL or some other enterprise distro. If cost is an issue you should look at embracing a RHEL clone. CentOS tracks RHEL closely; run CentOS and upgrade to the RHEL4 update kernels as they are released.