Kernel Summit Wrapup

Jonathan Corbet at LWN has posted a terrific summary of the first Day of the Ottawa Kernel Summit, and you should expect the second day soon. In it he relates the greatest hits of the first day's talks, including the AMD Hammer Port, Block I/O, Modules, and more. For mp3s or oggs of this event, check out the Kernel Summit MP3 Repository on SourceForge. The big news is the desire to feature freeze 2.5 within 4 or 5 months. Halloween. I've posted a very small gallery of the group pictures from the summit on my site.

Comments

modules, and why Rusty is wrong:

[rodgerd]

Rusty started with the claim that the only purpose for modules was adding hardware that you didn't have when you booted your kernel.

Sorry, but this shows a paucity of imagination ("Rusty's smoking crack again"). Modules are useful because I don't have to rebuild the kernel constantly. I love not needing to care if I have to swap ethernet cards - tune /etc/modules.conf, reboot. Not "reconfigure and recompile kernel, fiddle with lilo, reboot".

I also love the fact that distros no longer resemble the bad old days where there where a billion different boot images for installation, depending on which combination of hardware I happen to have. Anyone want to guess the QA costs to RedHat if modules went away?

Rusty's wrong, wrong, wrong.

Re:modules, and why Rusty is wrong:

[Jeppe Salvesen]

Dude. If I had to compile in support for all possible hardware devices, my kernel would make xp look light.

Kernel modules are very cost-efficient things when you run a company. Rather than recompiling (or using a bloat-kernel), you can mostly run the same kernel on multiple computers from different vendors.

What's new in 2.5?

[RelliK]

What I especially want to see:

* ACLs!
* All journalling file systems merged (XFS, JFS, ext3, ReiserFS)
* No more VM stability issues

Anyone know if we can expect that?

On a side note, what are the four FSs above best suited for? I know ReiserFS is really good at working with lots of small files and XFS is excellent at data streaming. Anyone care to add more details?

Re:What's new in 2.5?

[BJH]

I think "All journalling file systems merged" was intended to mean "All four file systems integrated into the kernel", not "all four fiel systems merged into one".

kernel developers to Debian: put up or shut up

[fw3]

my own favorite quotes from the discussion: - audio (approximately)

(Linus speaking): moving this (binary drivers with which Stallman / deb take issue) into user space is a sign of mental disorder .... we are clear from a copyright standpoint ... linux has intentionally taken a non-rabid standpoint ... as I've shown with my use of bitkeeper I don't care about black and white people.

[issues about firmware && binary modules]

(Alan Cox?) The kernel developers do not have energy to sit down and determine a clear set of rules ... Debian has an endless supply of people who have nothing better to do than study legal issues....

[Linus points out that actual GPL violating files get addressed in ca 24 hr timeframe]

The conclusion was to send a message back to the Debian users to "put up or shut up"

I'm sure RMS will have a press release out later this week.