On Wed, Oct 31, 2001 at 10:28:58PM -0500, Russell Hires wrote:
>
> >
> > Everything is as it was before. The VM change seems a little unusual to
> > some people, but if that's your only reason to question the versioning
> > scheme you need to get over it...and quickly.
>
> That wasn't helpful. :-( In general I'm questioning the way the versioning
> worked in the past vs how it's working now. Derek answered pretty well my
> question. From that answer I get the idea that Linus knew that a larger
group
> of people wouldn't test the kernel out because it carried the stigma
of being
> "experimental" or "unstable." So he played a semantic trick on people
to get
> more people to put it through its paces.
>
> I think this is bad for the credibility of the kernel hackers (and
> Linus/Linux especially), because it gives the idea that we can't trust what
> they say is good/not-good, stable/unstable. If people are (g)rumbling that
> the 2.4.x kernel isn't stable, or that you can crash it under heavy loads,
> how is Joe Corporate User going to know what he should use? Or is he
going to
> want to use it at all, because he can't rely on the information that says,
> "2.4.x is stable"? A lot of people don't want to test out kernels. I
know I
> don't. This can't be good for Linux.
>
> Russell
This is why we have distros, and why most people don't upgrade their
kernels from the sources all by themselves. I understand your concern,
and I see Linus's point. The distros test and patch kernels so that they
pretty well know whether a kernel will work on their distro or not. So
if you get your kernel from your distro's makers, you're likely safe.
Upgrading directly from source-- well, that's always been a crap shoot
anyway.
Paul (Foster)
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