On Sun, May 28, 2000 at 07:24:56PM -0400, Mark Hahn wrote:
> > > in a pure marketing sense, Linux is being killed by the multi-year
> > > release cycle. there have been literally scores of 2.3 kernels
> > > that were superior to any 2.2 (that is, production-worthy.)
> >
> > Wow. And to think how badly flamed I was for a comment earlier today about
> > that very issue...
> >
> > (of course I agree with you.)
>
> no, I'm not saying the same thing. I think the way Linus runs
> development is excellent. but for marketing reasons, I think
> we should call certain development kernels full releases.
> 2.3.36, for instance, is afaiks, lightyears beyond anything
> that 2.2 ever was or will be.
>
> in other words, the stable/dev system isn't fine-grain enough,
> and I'm not talking strictly temporal grain.
There's a problem with that, as Alan recognized. The stable/dev system is
fine. There are bugs in all the development kernels. In many, I guess 2.3.36
in particular, most were not identified. Sure, it might work great for
you, Linus, Alan, and your neighbor's best friend's inlaw, but will it
work on the production servers BigCo Inc. just set up? What if there
is some glaring bug in there that has not been identified because the
kernel has not been rigorously tested?
That's why I proposed shortening the open development time, and including
fewer new features per kernel release. To take your example, say lots
of people identified 2.3.36 as being a great kernel. Okay, code freeze
right there. Only modify stuff if it's broken. We could have had 2.4 a long
time ago. How would you have liked that?
Kenneth
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