Re: I vote for updated RAID and KNFSD

M Carling (m@idiom.com)
Sat, 11 Sep 1999 16:37:12 -0700 (PDT)


On Sat, 11 Sep 1999, Fred Reimer wrote:

> On Wed, 08 Sep 1999, M Carling wrote:
> > Everyone seems to agree that the "stable" kernels could and should be more
> > stable. I've suggested a methodology for achieving increased stability.
> > Several posters don't like my suggestion, but they haven't offered an
> > alternative.

I stand corrected. Fred Reimer evidently thinks the "stable" kernels
should not be stable.

> How about recommending to your Wall Street crowd that they only use
> kernel updates as provided by the distribution vendor they choose? I'd
> find it quite shocking and frankly unbelievable that companies that are
> always looking for someone to sue should they have problems would
> internally develop their own distributions or use "raw" kernel updates.

Right now, most investment banks on Wall Street are Solaris shops. Even
with Solaris, they pretty much all roll their own distributions--based on
Sun's distribution of course. They standardize on a set of patches, and
gnu-ify the tools, as well as adding their own libraries. If Linux gets
adopted on Wall Street, I expect it will be the same: They will take a
distribution and then heavily modify it and forever diverge from it.

> I don't think I can say this loud enough but, there is no reason that
> people who are not "developers" should be using even stable kernel
> releases. Many probably would not agree with that....

The key thing here is whether or not Linus thinks that "stable" kernels
should be only for developers. If Linus thinks that (which I doubt), then
perhaps it is time to rename the kernel series. Even numbered kernels
could be called developmental and odd numbered kernels could be called
experimental. However, I really don't think that is what Linus (or most of
the Linux community) wants.

M Carling

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