On Sat, Jun 16, 2007 at 02:23:25PM +0200, Stefan Richter wrote:...
[Adrian, I'm not saying "too few users run -rc kernels", I'm saying "too
few FireWire driver users run -rc kernels".]
Getting more people testing -rc kernels might be possible, and I don't think it would be too hard. And not only FireWire would benefit from this, remember e.g. that at least 2 out of the last 5 kernels Linus released contained filesystem corruption regressions.
The problem is that we aren't able to handle the many regression reports we get today, so asking for more testing and regression reports today would attack it at the wrong part of the chain.
Additionally, every reported and unhandled regression will frustrate the reporter - never forget that we have _many_ unhandled bug reports (including but not limited to regression reports) where the submitter spent much time and energy in writing a good bug report.
If we somehow gain the missing manpower for debugging regressions we can actively ask for more testing. Missing manpower (of people knowing some part of the kernel well) for debugging bug reports is IMHO the one big source of quality problems in the Linux kernel. If we get this solved, things like getting more testers for -rc kernels will become low hanging fruits.