Long-term support and backport risk [LWN.net]

Long-term support and backport risk

Posted Jun 21, 2007 7:51 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313)
In reply to: Long-term support and backport risk by smoogen
Parent article: Long-term support and backport risk

people who think that 2.0, 2.2 or 2.4 kernels never had problem releases like 2.6.21 just weren't there to experiance them. there were releases in all three series that make 2.6.21 look rock solid (even ignoreing the early releases in all three series)

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Long-term support and backport risk

Posted Jun 21, 2007 16:48 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

Actually I did gloss over the issues of major changes in the 2.0, 2.2, and 2.4 series (2.4.9->2.4.14.. actually 2.0.10, 2.2.10 all were areas of instability). In most cases they were usually the kernel people seeing that something was majorly borked in their assumptions and having to retrofix a lot of stuff that they didnt make assumptions for. However from the items that LWN has shown on the kernel pages.. the amount of code changes in those series for a period of 2-4 sub-releases was less than what occurs between 2.6.20 and 2.6.21 or 2.6.14 and 2.6.15.

[From someone who has done systems administration support of kernels from 1993.]

Long-term support and backport risk

Posted Jun 21, 2007 23:53 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

there is no question that the rate of change has increased drasticly.

I wouldn't be surprised if the 2.6.21->2.6.22 changes riveled or exceeded the 1.2.0 -> 1.3.0 changes. the fact that it's happening so quickly with so few problems is amazing.

when I referred to the problems in the 2.0, 2.2, and 2.4 series, I wasn't just thinking of the couple major problems, I'm remembering that there were several 'brown paper bag' releases scattered throughout the series