Enterprise distributions suck and free software rules

Posted Mar 8, 2011 13:02 UTC (Tue) by kragilkragil (guest, #72832)
In reply to: Enterprise distributions suck and free software rules by airlied
Parent article: Enterprise distributions and free software

If nobody would do the Franken-kernel BS then all vendors would have to test with Linus RCs and everybody would be even happier. The enterprise kernel story is weak anyway you skin it and wastes so many hours of precious kernel devs lifes.
It needs to die and I hope it will sooner than later and I hope that the next few quarters RHs numbers won't be shiny and investors will punish them for wasting their money on inefficient development.

Enterprise distributions suck and free software rules

Posted Mar 8, 2011 20:26 UTC (Tue) by airlied (subscriber, #9104) [Link] (3 responses)

you look like you have a business plan in you, or don't really understand.

The QA cycle is longer than the kernel release cycle. QAing a kernel requires a set amount of time, at least for people to be happy that it isn't considerably worse than the previous one. Some of the benchmarks that enterprise customers care about can nearly take longer than the test cycle to get scheduled, they require hw that isn't always available. Never mind tracking down regressions using a bisect on a test that takes a week to run and process the results of.

Enterprise distributions suck and free software rules

Posted Mar 8, 2011 20:43 UTC (Tue) by lmb (subscriber, #39048) [Link] (2 responses)

QA cycles can be shortened. That is "merely" an engineering problem that can be solved: automation, parallelization, smarter tests, and better test plans. Not to mention better code review. There's a whole stack of books on continuous delivery & deployment out there in your library.

And even if the test cases were only run for, say, for every three upstream releases, I postulate that this would a) greatly reduce the chance that relevant regressions get introduced, b) even rev'ing the "enterprise" kernels every three upstream kernel releases would already be a huge boost over rev'ing them every 3 years.

I'd never have expected that, of all people, the _Linux_ folks would be the ones to claim that Linux/OSS can't work in an mission-critical environment but needs to be curtailed to a legacy "enterprise" model! I'm truly amazed.

Enterprise distributions suck and free software rules

Posted Mar 9, 2011 4:22 UTC (Wed) by airlied (subscriber, #9104) [Link]

I think you are missing a large point, if you have competent admins, and I stress admins, (having one super-hero admin is a really bad business decision and you deserve your whitebox+Linus solution to fail hard when your admin has some life altering event), then you can totally deploy Linus tree into mission critical places. Google, facebook etc are prime examples of this, even though google might be a few kernels back they are getting closer to mainline. However if you have management or admins who like to spend time with their kids/families then you have to have some sort of support place you can call and someone you can blame. Now the company providing that service cannot provide bespoke Linus kernels every 3 months, it just isn't practical.

Enterprise distros also have a whole bunch of certifications (government, application) etc that it isn't feasible to redo every 3-6 mths it can takes a year or so to get some of them finished.

Enterprise distributions suck and free software rules

Posted Mar 9, 2011 4:27 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

"QA cycles can be shortened. That is "merely" an engineering problem that can be solved: automation, parallelization, smarter tests, and better test plans. Not to mention better code review. There's a whole stack of books on continuous delivery & deployment out there in your library."

If you can make this model work, you have a brilliant edge over the competition. Feel free to try.

"I'd never have expected that, of all people, the _Linux_ folks would be the ones to claim that Linux/OSS can't work in an mission-critical environment but needs to be curtailed to a legacy "enterprise" model! I'm truly amazed."

Linux can certainly work in a mission critical environment. The debate is not about that at all but whether the current enterprise model is legacy or necessary. I would say that it is possible to tweak the model and vendors occasionally do that but it is not going to go away unless some vendor decides to provide a sustainable alternative.