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The embedded Linux nightmare - an epilogue

The embedded Linux nightmare - an epilogue

Posted May 2, 2007 13:55 UTC (Wed) by jreiser (subscriber, #11027)
In reply to: The embedded Linux nightmare - an epilogue by NAR
Parent article: The embedded Linux nightmare - an epilogue

they want the new feature... but don't want the new bugs

This is exactly what matters for an embedded product, and exactly where the Linux development process fails. Last week Adrian Bunk quit in disgust at the regressions http://lwn.net/Articles/231993/ and Andrew Morton said the situaition is likely to get worse http://lwn.net/Articles/232432/. Consumers do not tolerate such shoddy products.


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The embedded Linux nightmare - an epilogue

Posted May 2, 2007 16:26 UTC (Wed) by khim (guest, #9252) [Link]

This is exactly what matters for an embedded product, and exactly where the Linux development process fails.

Not really. If you'll try to backport new features to ancient kernel you'll get new features, new bugs (in subsystems which must be modified to accommodate new features) and your own unique bugs (because you'll have mostly-untested mix of old and new kernels).

Consumers do not tolerate such shoddy products.

Sure they do. If you'll take line of mobile phones from any manufacturer and count number of bugs and regressions - you'll probably find more bugs/regressions then 14. And most of them are known. And some are even fixed in unofficial firmware. This is waay worse then what happens with kernel - yet Nokia and Samsung are selling millions of phones...

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