Stable kernel prepatch 2.4.19-rc1-ac7

Posted Jul 17, 2002 16:24 UTC (Wed) by bryn (guest, #1482)
Parent article: Stable kernel prepatch 2.4.19-rc1-ac7

The long wait in 2.4.19 is, in my opinion, an unhealthy one. The logic that must follow for many onlookers is that 2.4.18 is not the most stable release, the next version - 2.4.19 - is not out, therefore there is no stable release of Linux available. That means people are wary of whatever version they are using, since it is not up to date, but at a loss as to how to upgrade.
For this reason it would seem that Marcelo is perhaps not acting responsibly given his position as maintainer. Others, such as Alan Cox, appear (at least to someone such as myself who depends on LWN for all linux news) to be doing Marcelo's job, and a lot better.
Linux has taken on a much higher profile than it used to. Despite the lack of monetary reward, maintaining the stable linux kernel can no longer be treated as a hobby, and these long delays appear unprofessional.

Stable kernel prepatch 2.4.19-rc1-ac7

Posted Jul 17, 2002 19:29 UTC (Wed) by dr_lha (guest, #86) [Link] (2 responses)

I agree with you in parts. Marcelo has just released 2.4.19rc2 however - but seems not to announced it. The 2.4 tree does seem to have slowed to a crawl.

However what I don't agree with is that Alan Cox is doing Marcelo's job better than him. Alan is maintaining a highly patched and experimental version of 2.4.19-rc1, I tried it last night and it couldn't compile with my set up. It's Marcelo's job to maintain the most stable version of 2.4 possible - which means not throwing everything in and the kitchen sink like Alan does.

As for the unprofessional aspect - not many companies actually care about the next 0.0.1 official release of the kernel - they tend to get their kernels prepackaged by redhat or whatever other company. It's only the home/geek users who anxiously await the new kernel to recompile for all the minor updates. Believe me there aren't any Fortune 500 companies sitting around for Marcelo to release the latest kernel - all the time loss $$$ because of a bug in the current version.

Stable kernel prepatch 2.4.19-rc1-ac7

Posted Jul 17, 2002 21:32 UTC (Wed) by smeg4brains (guest, #207) [Link]

..Well, I just fought with 2.4.18 for days trying to get the thing to boot
off of our RAID controller. We really wanted to be running a "stable"
kernel version, and have been waiting for 2.4.19 for a *LONG* time.

I finally gave up on waiting longer for a stable release or trying to beat
2.4.18 into working.

I switched up to 2.4.19-pre1-ac6 last night, and things are now finally
booting correctly.

I like Marcello, but he does really need to learn that his kernel doesn't
have to be *perfect*. More stable that the existing stable kernel is still
acceptable for release. You'll never be able to release a completely
bug-free kernel, and in his new (sorta) position, he'll probably never be
able to avoid knowing about at least some bugs in any given kernel.

I seem to remember that like 2 days after 2.4.18 came out, there was some
stuff about avoiding it like the plague if you're running on the sparc
architecture, and to just wait for 2.4.19. If only people knew what they
were in for when they were thinking that they'd just wait.

Stable kernel prepatch 2.4.19-rc1-ac7

Posted Jul 18, 2002 9:33 UTC (Thu) by bryn (guest, #1482) [Link]

Fair point about Marcelo vs. Alan. All the same, at least Alan appears to be very active in the kernel development scene. I haven't seen much mention of Marcelo save for comments about how he hasn't released anything. Granted, this is just from LWN and it might be a completely different story if I was monitoring the kernel mailing list.