Re:Which releases are production stable?
by
ajs
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
If you're grabbing the kernel-o-the-week, I suggest you're always going to be "less than production quality". Vendors like Red Hat, SuSe, Mandrake, etc. spend a whole lot of time integrating new kernel releases with their operating systems. This can include bug-fixing, testing on a number of hardware platforms, retro-fitting patches from development versions that are required for certain business segments and even beta periods for certain cutting-edge features (e.g. Red Hat's long trails internally and externally of the ext3 filesystem).
You should probably think of the stable kernels as just that: stable. That doesn't mean they are ready for prime-time. It's more like a "stable branch". You expect this to be the branch from which the distributions will craft The Right Kernel for their platforms.
Should you use such a kernel, then? Yes, but only if a) you're in a non-mission-critical situation or b) you "must have" a certain bug-fix and are willing to put in the Q/A yourself.
Think of the linux kernel as released on kernel.org like Mozilla. This is like a milestone release. Netscape will come out with something based on it which has Java, Flash, some back-ported bug fixes from later nightlies, etc. The corporate user should probably wait and go with a Netscape release, but here I am submitting this comment from a nightly;-)
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If you're grabbing the kernel-o-the-week, I suggest you're always going to be "less than production quality". Vendors like Red Hat, SuSe, Mandrake, etc. spend a whole lot of time integrating new kernel releases with their operating systems. This can include bug-fixing, testing on a number of hardware platforms, retro-fitting patches from development versions that are required for certain business segments and even beta periods for certain cutting-edge features (e.g. Red Hat's long trails internally and externally of the ext3 filesystem).
;-)
You should probably think of the stable kernels as just that: stable. That doesn't mean they are ready for prime-time. It's more like a "stable branch". You expect this to be the branch from which the distributions will craft The Right Kernel for their platforms.
Should you use such a kernel, then? Yes, but only if a) you're in a non-mission-critical situation or b) you "must have" a certain bug-fix and are willing to put in the Q/A yourself.
Think of the linux kernel as released on kernel.org like Mozilla. This is like a milestone release. Netscape will come out with something based on it which has Java, Flash, some back-ported bug fixes from later nightlies, etc. The corporate user should probably wait and go with a Netscape release, but here I am submitting this comment from a nightly