A survey on kernel quality [LWN.net]

A survey on kernel quality

Posted Jul 10, 2006 4:24 UTC (Mon) by guest (guest, #2027)
Parent article: A survey on kernel quality

Not too long ago, I heard from a RedHat developer
that the IDE ( disk and CD ) code has no one assigned.

This recent information does not explain why I can't
use my CD-ROM distro boot (from RH8 thru FC5 ) on a
present 350 Mhz, or 450 Mhz Compaq, or a now defunct
generic 266/233 Mhz. Even when installed, the HD wouldn't
boot. I installed an entire FC3 RPMing by HAND after
copying RPM files inside another box from disk1 to disk2
( ide=nodma wasn't enough). Wouldn't older machines have
more burn in and tested code ??? I'll bet a LOT of newbies
have older machines and newbies trying to boot and install from
CD-ROM simply (and silently !!) give up. The IDE appears to
work fine on my +500 Mhz x86 machines. I find it interesting
that my sampling of kernel discussions have had continual
chatter on the IDE for the 10 years or so I've randomly sampled
it. (I'm NOT blaming any developer past or present on the
state of IDE chip developement or variations ).

I understand a new IDE system has been in the wings for some time.
Maybe the big 3 distros should collaborate to support ( $$ speaking )
it's release - and get this bugaboo behind us. IDE ain't going away
soon.

Default CD boots on distros should have Minimal functions
until the kernel can tell whats there !! ( ide=nodma in particular. )
This should include things like video res/buffers, etc..
I was informed RH distros CDROM boot are not slimmed down so users
upgrades would go faster.

drivers: still can't use my ancient Colorado HP parallel port scanner,
so I keep it connected to a win98 box. Still can't use any of my
4 or 5 winmodem cards.

pauses:
my Dell 660Mhz/256 meg ram running FC5 seems to have major
pauses in X/Gnome/metacity when Firefox has more than about
15-20 tabs in 2 windows: it gradually slows down: memory leak ?
( I'm talking 15 seconds or more wait time ).

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A survey on kernel quality

Posted Jul 10, 2006 7:33 UTC (Mon) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]

As I remember it, IDE is a mares nest of bugs (that's not the kernel, that's the hardware, and every new chipset includes a brand new bugset :-(

Alan tried to get the kernel driver as clean as possible WITHOUT breaking all the numerous bugfixes. Then he went on sabbatical. When he came back, he discovered that the person who'd taken over from him had revamped the code, "cleaned up" a large number of bugfixes (note - they were fixes to chipsets, not the driver) such that the driver no longer worked with those chipsets, and there was a major row.

Basically, IDE has *always* been an absolute nightmare to maintain. Probably the reason Windows has far fewer problems is that (a) Windows code is as big a mess as the chipsets, and (b) Windows needs to support far fewer chipsets because they have a habit of obsoleting hardware... one occasion where that policy actually makes good programming sense, rather than just good business sense...

Cheers,
Wol

A survey on kernel quality

Posted Jul 10, 2006 11:30 UTC (Mon) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]

well, most irritations i have are IDE related - now and then, a new kernel version introduces less stable performance, ie stalls etc. lately things have ben good, btw, I think the kernel is getting better, not worse. but it might not go fast enough, and i'm sure if you have newer hardware, you might be bugged a lot more often.

Won't install/boot on older machines

Posted Jul 11, 2006 12:51 UTC (Tue) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]

It most probably doesn't work because today most distros assume i686 or equivalent. Without further details, very little can be said.

Have you reported your troubles to the relevant distributions? Did you ask Google, searched the relevant mailing lists?