Networking change causes distribution headaches

Posted Oct 30, 2008 1:05 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767)
In reply to: Networking change causes distribution headaches by jordip
Parent article: Networking change causes distribution headaches

"""
The problem here is that Ubuntu released too close to a kernel release.
"""

Ubuntu has traditionally been more conservative. But in a "practice what we preach" action, they sync'd up with the other major distros which were planning to use 2.6.27 to help synchronize problem finding and debugging focus. Personally, the way kernel development is done these days I think the distros need to lag kernel releases a bit more. The fall releases, with the exception of Fedora, should really have targeted 2.6.26. I'm not criticizing the current kernel development process (though I gravely note Andrew's ongoing quality concerns), but the 2.6 dev process means that the distros are responsible for that much more of the QA. And that can't be done in a hurry. This particular issue doesn't seem too severe. But a month before general availability, going gold, or whatever you want to call it, the included kernel shouldn't be physically destroying beta testers' hardware or otherwise exhibiting behavior of baby-eating magnitude.

Networking change causes distribution headaches

Posted Oct 30, 2008 13:50 UTC (Thu) by filipjoelsson (guest, #2622) [Link]

Excuse me but, what are you talking about?

In the earlier series of kernels, the vendor patchsets were much larger - and contained everything from drivers and filesystems to security fixes. I would argue that there was less QA before kernel release in the 2.0, 2.2 and 2.4 series (where the QA was, it boots Linus'/Alan's/Marcello's computer). Ok, so now there is a much bigger difference between each point version than it was then, but still - the vendors cooperate in the same kernel tree to a much larger extent, and there actually _is_ QA now. Anyone remember versions 2.2.0, and 2.2.1 (what were they, one or two days apart)? Care to have a chat about kernel versions 2.4.0 to 2.4.13?

What we have now is tremendously better tested than the old and ancient series.