2.6 and 2.7 Release Management

An anonymous reader writes: "A recent discussion on the Linux kernel mailing list debated whether the upcoming 2.6 and 2.7 kernels should be released at the same time instead of first stabilizing the 2.6 'stable tree' then branching the 2.7 'development tree.' The theory behind the proposition is to keep "new" things from going into 2.6 once it is released, focusing instead only on making it stable. On the flip side of this argument is the possibility that with a 2.7 kernel in development, there will be too little focus on stabilizing the 2.6 kernel. The resulting debate makes for an interesting read."

Comments

fp

[Anonymous Coward]

FUCK YOU ALL

Re:fp

[Horny Smurf]

Yep, fuck me :)

I quite an ordinary guy. No big muscles, no huge dick, not even particularly handsome, but I'm a lucky person. You know, the kind of guy that fun things always seem to happen to. I can't remember the first time I real- ized that I was lucky, but I certainly remember one night in New York City, late in the evening when I was doing a little Bar hopping, when I walked into the local bar and seated myself.

I was expecting to have a regular Friday night but the fates dealt me a new card that night. I was on my second round when a woman approached my table and asked if the extra chair had been taken. I replied that it wasn't and she proceeded to sit down.

She had suicidal blonde hair and a voluptuous body. She wore a tight miniskirt and fishnet stockings and to flatter her large breasts she wore a low cut halter top that revealed a lot of cleavage. Her eyes were the wildest shade of green I had ever seen in eyes, very light and almost florescent but not quite.

We began to talk and continued a good conversation for about an hour when the subject suddenly switched to sex. (I think that she was the one who first brought the subject up.)

We discussed our personal sexual preferences for a while and we were both getting quite horny. (You know, flirting shamelessly with each other.)

Another fifteen minutes of steamy sex talk went by when I felt her leg sweep across my foot. Thinking nothing of it I continued talking. Then I felt her leg but this time it was rubbing up and down my shin. I got an instant hard-on and pushed my leg out a bit more, so as she had plenty of room to work on it.

We continued our conversation as her leg rubbed higher and higher making its way towards my crotch area. Then her foot raised and pushed against my groin. She slid her foot up and down in a very pleasing manner. After about two minutes of this she stopped and got up.

"I'm going to freshen up." She said seductively with a wink. I guessed what she wanted me to do by the sparkle in her eyes, so after she had been gone for a couple of seconds I got up too and went off in the same direc- tion. I was in the back halls of the bar trying to find where she might be when I was pulled into a utility room. I couldn't see her but I recognized the scent of her perfume.

We where locked in each others embrace immediately like lovers who were going to die at any moment.

I slid my hand down her back, across her butt, and down her leg until I reached the bottom of her skirt. I slid my hand under and began rubbing her thighs. They were bare and I quickly discovered that she wasn't wearing any panties either.

As I was felling this bird up she was undoing my pants and sliding her hand under my boxer shorts. She rubbed my dick with those long delicate fingers I had admired before and made me so excited that I wasn't sure how much more massaging I was going to be able to stand.

I moved my hand on down until it came to the outer fringes of pubic hair, then ran my fingers through it and came to her juicy cunt. I parted her vaginal lips with my middle finger then slid it in. What a delight to feel her all lubricated for me. I love that special slickness that a horny woman has when she's ready to be fucked. It makes me crazy.

She began to move her hips up and down shoving herself on to my finger. She made noises similar to purring as she got more and more excited. Her grip on my cock tightened as she was about to orgasm.

Finally, as she came her cunt juices flowed out in barrels covering my hand and down her inner thigh. Then my pretty baby started to stroke my cock in earnest.

I slipped my fingers out of her honey pot and tried to dry them on my shirt. Before I could react my little fuck doll slid down to her knees in front of me and placed her lips on my dick. She slid her mouth over the head of it and began to bob that pretty blonde head like there was no tomorrow.

It was like an erotic torture. She managed to take my full length in one swallow gagging just a bit. I could feel the head of my dick going down her throat which was a lot like entering a pussy.

I came about a minute later after one of the best blow- jobs of my life. There was no way I could have held out any longer, she really knew what she was doing. (She must have had a lot of experience, the way she played me like a musical instrument.)

After I came she stood up in front of me. I could hear her heavy breathing and could smell my come on her breath. I could tell that she was still as stimulated as I was. So I pressed her against the wall and slowly shoved her down to the floor of the utility room. With out asking I lifted her skirt and climbed on top of her small body.

I heard her moan as I arranged my dick at her opening and I readied for the wildest fuck of my lifetime. Pushing I entered her little piece of paradise with full thrust. She screamed with pain and pleasure as my cock shoved its way home, but after a few more strokes the noises she made were those of lust.

As my dick pounded her cunt my hands found themselves fondling her firm tits. (I had torn her blouse open. I can still remember the sound of her buttons flying around the room.)

After a minute she began to get more and more excited and clamped her shapely legs around my body and started to thrust onto my cock, enabling maximum penetration. On one particularly deep thrust I felt her vaginal walls clamp around my dick like a vice. When she began to climax her back arched up off the floor and she began to make hissing noises.

I wish the lights had been on so I could have seen her face as she clawed the air. It lasted for a few seconds, then she fell back and her body relaxed under me.

I had been effected by her emotional and physical climax and came in floods myself. I emptied spurt after spurt into her until I thought if I kept doing it much longer she might explode.

After gaining the most pleasure I could from her sweaty body I withdrew my semi-hard dick from her. My white cream spilled from her used cunt as I withdrew from her. (After a couple seconds it stopped.)

"Was it good for you baby?" I asked.

"Fuck yes lover, better than I can remember ever!" She replied as she panted for air. After a brief time of silence she said, "Well I guess I should be going now." She got up.

I just kind of laid there, still out of breath as she pulled her damaged blouse closed and adjusted her skirt to cover her come soaked cunt. And a moment later she was gone.

I never did see her again, and I didn't even know her name, but I've always had a thing for suicide blondes ever since.

More to the point...

[Klerck]

You're all niggers.

Thank you.

Re:More to the point...

[Brownie the AssClown]

Why do niggers smell like fucking shit? thnx.

Re:More to the point...

[Horny Smurf]

I quite an ordinary guy. No big muscles, no huge dick, not even particularly handsome, but I'm a lucky person. You know, the kind of guy that fun things always seem to happen to. I can't remember the first time I real- ized that I was lucky, but I certainly remember one night in New York City, late in the evening when I was doing a little Bar hopping, when I walked into the local bar and seated myself.

I was expecting to have a regular Friday night but the fates dealt me a new card that night. I was on my second round when a woman approached my table and asked if the extra chair had been taken. I replied that it wasn't and she proceeded to sit down.

She had suicidal blonde hair and a voluptuous body. She wore a tight miniskirt and fishnet stockings and to flatter her large breasts she wore a low cut halter top that revealed a lot of cleavage. Her eyes were the wildest shade of green I had ever seen in eyes, very light and almost florescent but not quite.

We began to talk and continued a good conversation for about an hour when the subject suddenly switched to sex. (I think that she was the one who first brought the subject up.)

We discussed our personal sexual preferences for a while and we were both getting quite horny. (You know, flirting shamelessly with each other.)

Another fifteen minutes of steamy sex talk went by when I felt her leg sweep across my foot. Thinking nothing of it I continued talking. Then I felt her leg but this time it was rubbing up and down my shin. I got an instant hard-on and pushed my leg out a bit more, so as she had plenty of room to work on it.

We continued our conversation as her leg rubbed higher and higher making its way towards my crotch area. Then her foot raised and pushed against my groin. She slid her foot up and down in a very pleasing manner. After about two minutes of this she stopped and got up.

"I'm going to freshen up." She said seductively with a wink. I guessed what she wanted me to do by the sparkle in her eyes, so after she had been gone for a couple of seconds I got up too and went off in the same direc- tion. I was in the back halls of the bar trying to find where she might be when I was pulled into a utility room. I couldn't see her but I recognized the scent of her perfume.

We where locked in each others embrace immediately like lovers who were going to die at any moment.

I slid my hand down her back, across her butt, and down her leg until I reached the bottom of her skirt. I slid my hand under and began rubbing her thighs. They were bare and I quickly discovered that she wasn't wearing any panties either.

As I was felling this bird up she was undoing my pants and sliding her hand under my boxer shorts. She rubbed my dick with those long delicate fingers I had admired before and made me so excited that I wasn't sure how much more massaging I was going to be able to stand.

I moved my hand on down until it came to the outer fringes of pubic hair, then ran my fingers through it and came to her juicy cunt. I parted her vaginal lips with my middle finger then slid it in. What a delight to feel her all lubricated for me. I love that special slickness that a horny woman has when she's ready to be fucked. It makes me crazy.

She began to move her hips up and down shoving herself on to my finger. She made noises similar to purring as she got more and more excited. Her grip on my cock tightened as she was about to orgasm.

Finally, as she came her cunt juices flowed out in barrels covering my hand and down her inner thigh. Then my pretty baby started to stroke my cock in earnest.

I slipped my fingers out of her honey pot and tried to dry them on my shirt. Before I could react my little fuck doll slid down to her knees in front of me and placed her lips on my dick. She slid her mouth over the head of it and began to bob that pretty blonde head like there was no tomorrow.

It was like an erotic torture. She managed to take my full length in one swallow gagging just a bit. I could feel the head of my dick going down her throat which was a lot like entering a pussy.

I came about a minute later after one of the best blow- jobs of my life. There was no way I could have held out any longer, she really knew what she was doing. (She must have had a lot of experience, the way she played me like a musical instrument.)

After I came she stood up in front of me. I could hear her heavy breathing and could smell my come on her breath. I could tell that she was still as stimulated as I was. So I pressed her against the wall and slowly shoved her down to the floor of the utility room. With out asking I lifted her skirt and climbed on top of her small body.

I heard her moan as I arranged my dick at her opening and I readied for the wildest fuck of my lifetime. Pushing I entered her little piece of paradise with full thrust. She screamed with pain and pleasure as my cock shoved its way home, but after a few more strokes the noises she made were those of lust.

As my dick pounded her cunt my hands found themselves fondling her firm tits. (I had torn her blouse open. I can still remember the sound of her buttons flying around the room.)

After a minute she began to get more and more excited and clamped her shapely legs around my body and started to thrust onto my cock, enabling maximum penetration. On one particularly deep thrust I felt her vaginal walls clamp around my dick like a vice. When she began to climax her back arched up off the floor and she began to make hissing noises.

I wish the lights had been on so I could have seen her face as she clawed the air. It lasted for a few seconds, then she fell back and her body relaxed under me.

I had been effected by her emotional and physical climax and came in floods myself. I emptied spurt after spurt into her until I thought if I kept doing it much longer she might explode.

After gaining the most pleasure I could from her sweaty body I withdrew my semi-hard dick from her. My white cream spilled from her used cunt as I withdrew from her. (After a couple seconds it stopped.)

"Was it good for you baby?" I asked.

"Fuck yes lover, better than I can remember ever!" She replied as she panted for air. After a brief time of silence she said, "Well I guess I should be going now." She got up.

I just kind of laid there, still out of breath as she pulled her damaged blouse closed and adjusted her skirt to cover her come soaked cunt. And a moment later she was gone.

I never did see her again, and I didn't even know her name, but I've always had a thing for suicide blondes ever since.

Release it!

[term_0z]

I am doing fine with 2.4.x, but release fight? How can it be possible, just release the thing.

Re:Release it!

[Horny Smurf]

I quite an ordinary guy. No big muscles, no huge dick, not even particularly handsome, but I'm a lucky person. You know, the kind of guy that fun things always seem to happen to. I can't remember the first time I real- ized that I was lucky, but I certainly remember one night in New York City, late in the evening when I was doing a little Bar hopping, when I walked into the local bar and seated myself.

I was expecting to have a regular Friday night but the fates dealt me a new card that night. I was on my second round when a woman approached my table and asked if the extra chair had been taken. I replied that it wasn't and she proceeded to sit down.

She had suicidal blonde hair and a voluptuous body. She wore a tight miniskirt and fishnet stockings and to flatter her large breasts she wore a low cut halter top that revealed a lot of cleavage. Her eyes were the wildest shade of green I had ever seen in eyes, very light and almost florescent but not quite.

We began to talk and continued a good conversation for about an hour when the subject suddenly switched to sex. (I think that she was the one who first brought the subject up.)

We discussed our personal sexual preferences for a while and we were both getting quite horny. (You know, flirting shamelessly with each other.)

Another fifteen minutes of steamy sex talk went by when I felt her leg sweep across my foot. Thinking nothing of it I continued talking. Then I felt her leg but this time it was rubbing up and down my shin. I got an instant hard-on and pushed my leg out a bit more, so as she had plenty of room to work on it.

We continued our conversation as her leg rubbed higher and higher making its way towards my crotch area. Then her foot raised and pushed against my groin. She slid her foot up and down in a very pleasing manner. After about two minutes of this she stopped and got up.

"I'm going to freshen up." She said seductively with a wink. I guessed what she wanted me to do by the sparkle in her eyes, so after she had been gone for a couple of seconds I got up too and went off in the same direc- tion. I was in the back halls of the bar trying to find where she might be when I was pulled into a utility room. I couldn't see her but I recognized the scent of her perfume.

We where locked in each others embrace immediately like lovers who were going to die at any moment.

I slid my hand down her back, across her butt, and down her leg until I reached the bottom of her skirt. I slid my hand under and began rubbing her thighs. They were bare and I quickly discovered that she wasn't wearing any panties either.

As I was felling this bird up she was undoing my pants and sliding her hand under my boxer shorts. She rubbed my dick with those long delicate fingers I had admired before and made me so excited that I wasn't sure how much more massaging I was going to be able to stand.

I moved my hand on down until it came to the outer fringes of pubic hair, then ran my fingers through it and came to her juicy cunt. I parted her vaginal lips with my middle finger then slid it in. What a delight to feel her all lubricated for me. I love that special slickness that a horny woman has when she's ready to be fucked. It makes me crazy.

She began to move her hips up and down shoving herself on to my finger. She made noises similar to purring as she got more and more excited. Her grip on my cock tightened as she was about to orgasm.

Finally, as she came her cunt juices flowed out in barrels covering my hand and down her inner thigh. Then my pretty baby started to stroke my cock in earnest.

I slipped my fingers out of her honey pot and tried to dry them on my shirt. Before I could react my little fuck doll slid down to her knees in front of me and placed her lips on my dick. She slid her mouth over the head of it and began to bob that pretty blonde head like there was no tomorrow.

It was like an erotic torture. She managed to take my full length in one swallow gagging just a bit. I could feel the head of my dick going down her throat which was a lot like entering a pussy.

I came about a minute later after one of the best blow- jobs of my life. There was no way I could have held out any longer, she really knew what she was doing. (She must have had a lot of experience, the way she played me like a musical instrument.)

After I came she stood up in front of me. I could hear her heavy breathing and could smell my come on her breath. I could tell that she was still as stimulated as I was. So I pressed her against the wall and slowly shoved her down to the floor of the utility room. With out asking I lifted her skirt and climbed on top of her small body.

I heard her moan as I arranged my dick at her opening and I readied for the wildest fuck of my lifetime. Pushing I entered her little piece of paradise with full thrust. She screamed with pain and pleasure as my cock shoved its way home, but after a few more strokes the noises she made were those of lust.

As my dick pounded her cunt my hands found themselves fondling her firm tits. (I had torn her blouse open. I can still remember the sound of her buttons flying around the room.)

After a minute she began to get more and more excited and clamped her shapely legs around my body and started to thrust onto my cock, enabling maximum penetration. On one particularly deep thrust I felt her vaginal walls clamp around my dick like a vice. When she began to climax her back arched up off the floor and she began to make hissing noises.

I wish the lights had been on so I could have seen her face as she clawed the air. It lasted for a few seconds, then she fell back and her body relaxed under me.

I had been effected by her emotional and physical climax and came in floods myself. I emptied spurt after spurt into her until I thought if I kept doing it much longer she might explode.

After gaining the most pleasure I could from her sweaty body I withdrew my semi-hard dick from her. My white cream spilled from her used cunt as I withdrew from her. (After a couple seconds it stopped.)

"Was it good for you baby?" I asked.

"Fuck yes lover, better than I can remember ever!" She replied as she panted for air. After a brief time of silence she said, "Well I guess I should be going now." She got up.

I just kind of laid there, still out of breath as she pulled her damaged blouse closed and adjusted her skirt to cover her come soaked cunt. And a moment later she was gone.

I never did see her again, and I didn't even know her name, but I've always had a thing for suicide blondes ever since.

ketchup

[Anonymous Cowrad]

I once saw a mustard bottle that was shaped like a ketchup bottle.

No, really!

I'm burning karma pointlessly, and no one will read this anyway.

I didn't mind having respectable karma when it was just a number (hell, I whored my little ass off to get there), but I refuse to be associated with the word "Good". I think it would feel much better to be "Bad".

So, this is me, falling slowly (or not so slowly) back into the comfortable 0-5 karma range. I'll probably dip down into -1 for a while just for the hell of it. Back in the day, I was a pretty good troll.

Oh, and by the way, fuck all this troll grouping shite. I'm sure it's nice to have something to mindlessly blather on about and poison your .sigs with, but it's getting stupid.

Whatever happened to the art of trolling? The whole idea is to prove that your takers are fools, not to annoy them. Crapflooding, PWP, and all that were sometimes funny, oftentimes creative, but now it's all old hat, isn't it? Nobody even tries for a bite anymore.

Trolling was once a noble, intellectual game. Now it's just a bunch of fuckwits copying and pasting.

Lame.

Re:ketchup

[CmdrTaco (troll)]

Go for Karma: terrible. Get your karma to -4. Then post as trolls as possible in the short time between -4 and -6. You have to get to -10 or better.

Re:ketchup

[Horny Smurf]

But.. have you ever seen this?

PS - please make your posts interesting, links to pictures of women having sex, etc.

I quite an ordinary guy. No big muscles, no huge dick, not even particularly handsome, but I'm a lucky person. You know, the kind of guy that fun things always seem to happen to. I can't remember the first time I real- ized that I was lucky, but I certainly remember one night in New York City, late in the evening when I was doing a little Bar hopping, when I walked into the local bar and seated myself.

I was expecting to have a regular Friday night but the fates dealt me a new card that night. I was on my second round when a woman approached my table and asked if the extra chair had been taken. I replied that it wasn't and she proceeded to sit down.

She had suicidal blonde hair and a voluptuous body. She wore a tight miniskirt and fishnet stockings and to flatter her large breasts she wore a low cut halter top that revealed a lot of cleavage. Her eyes were the wildest shade of green I had ever seen in eyes, very light and almost florescent but not quite.

We began to talk and continued a good conversation for about an hour when the subject suddenly switched to sex. (I think that she was the one who first brought the subject up.)

We discussed our personal sexual preferences for a while and we were both getting quite horny. (You know, flirting shamelessly with each other.)

Another fifteen minutes of steamy sex talk went by when I felt her leg sweep across my foot. Thinking nothing of it I continued talking. Then I felt her leg but this time it was rubbing up and down my shin. I got an instant hard-on and pushed my leg out a bit more, so as she had plenty of room to work on it.

We continued our conversation as her leg rubbed higher and higher making its way towards my crotch area. Then her foot raised and pushed against my groin. She slid her foot up and down in a very pleasing manner. After about two minutes of this she stopped and got up.

"I'm going to freshen up." She said seductively with a wink. I guessed what she wanted me to do by the sparkle in her eyes, so after she had been gone for a couple of seconds I got up too and went off in the same direc- tion. I was in the back halls of the bar trying to find where she might be when I was pulled into a utility room. I couldn't see her but I recognized the scent of her perfume.

We where locked in each others embrace immediately like lovers who were going to die at any moment.

I slid my hand down her back, across her butt, and down her leg until I reached the bottom of her skirt. I slid my hand under and began rubbing her thighs. They were bare and I quickly discovered that she wasn't wearing any panties either.

As I was felling this bird up she was undoing my pants and sliding her hand under my boxer shorts. She rubbed my dick with those long delicate fingers I had admired before and made me so excited that I wasn't sure how much more massaging I was going to be able to stand.

I moved my hand on down until it came to the outer fringes of pubic hair, then ran my fingers through it and came to her juicy cunt. I parted her vaginal lips with my middle finger then slid it in. What a delight to feel her all lubricated for me. I love that special slickness that a horny woman has when she's ready to be fucked. It makes me crazy.

She began to move her hips up and down shoving herself on to my finger. She made noises similar to purring as she got more and more excited. Her grip on my cock tightened as she was about to orgasm.

Finally, as she came her cunt juices flowed out in barrels covering my hand and down her inner thigh. Then my pretty baby started to stroke my cock in earnest.

I slipped my fingers out of her honey pot and tried to dry them on my shirt. Before I could react my little fuck doll slid down to her knees in front of me and placed her lips on my dick. She slid her mouth over the head of it and began to bob that pretty blonde head like there was no tomorrow.

It was like an erotic torture. She managed to take my full length in one swallow gagging just a bit. I could feel the head of my dick going down her throat which was a lot like entering a pussy.

I came about a minute later after one of the best blow- jobs of my life. There was no way I could have held out any longer, she really knew what she was doing. (She must have had a lot of experience, the way she played me like a musical instrument.)

After I came she stood up in front of me. I could hear her heavy breathing and could smell my come on her breath. I could tell that she was still as stimulated as I was. So I pressed her against the wall and slowly shoved her down to the floor of the utility room. With out asking I lifted her skirt and climbed on top of her small body.

I heard her moan as I arranged my dick at her opening and I readied for the wildest fuck of my lifetime. Pushing I entered her little piece of paradise with full thrust. She screamed with pain and pleasure as my cock shoved its way home, but after a few more strokes the noises she made were those of lust.

As my dick pounded her cunt my hands found themselves fondling her firm tits. (I had torn her blouse open. I can still remember the sound of her buttons flying around the room.)

After a minute she began to get more and more excited and clamped her shapely legs around my body and started to thrust onto my cock, enabling maximum penetration. On one particularly deep thrust I felt her vaginal walls clamp around my dick like a vice. When she began to climax her back arched up off the floor and she began to make hissing noises.

I wish the lights had been on so I could have seen her face as she clawed the air. It lasted for a few seconds, then she fell back and her body relaxed under me.

I had been effected by her emotional and physical climax and came in floods myself. I emptied spurt after spurt into her until I thought if I kept doing it much longer she might explode.

After gaining the most pleasure I could from her sweaty body I withdrew my semi-hard dick from her. My white cream spilled from her used cunt as I withdrew from her. (After a couple seconds it stopped.)

"Was it good for you baby?" I asked.

"Fuck yes lover, better than I can remember ever!" She replied as she panted for air. After a brief time of silence she said, "Well I guess I should be going now." She got up.

I just kind of laid there, still out of breath as she pulled her damaged blouse closed and adjusted her skirt to cover her come soaked cunt. And a moment later she was gone.

I never did see her again, and I didn't even know her name, but I've always had a thing for suicide blondes ever since.

Introducing The username troll.

[You Are A Fag]

n/t

Re:Introducing The username troll.

[Fecal Troll Matter]

Hello! Please be advised:

THE CLIT IS EVIL, KEEP YOUR DISTANCE

eot

Snot 'em!

[The Porn Count]

I wanna snot some tacos! Hey, Mr. Taco Man, join me in a circle-snot?

Re:Snot 'em!

[Horny Smurf]

I quite an ordinary guy. No big muscles, no huge dick, not even particularly handsome, but I'm a lucky person. You know, the kind of guy that fun things always seem to happen to. I can't remember the first time I real- ized that I was lucky, but I certainly remember one night in New York City, late in the evening when I was doing a little Bar hopping, when I walked into the local bar and seated myself.

I was expecting to have a regular Friday night but the fates dealt me a new card that night. I was on my second round when a woman approached my table and asked if the extra chair had been taken. I replied that it wasn't and she proceeded to sit down.

She had suicidal blonde hair and a voluptuous body. She wore a tight miniskirt and fishnet stockings and to flatter her large breasts she wore a low cut halter top that revealed a lot of cleavage. Her eyes were the wildest shade of green I had ever seen in eyes, very light and almost florescent but not quite.

We began to talk and continued a good conversation for about an hour when the subject suddenly switched to sex. (I think that she was the one who first brought the subject up.)

We discussed our personal sexual preferences for a while and we were both getting quite horny. (You know, flirting shamelessly with each other.)

Another fifteen minutes of steamy sex talk went by when I felt her leg sweep across my foot. Thinking nothing of it I continued talking. Then I felt her leg but this time it was rubbing up and down my shin. I got an instant hard-on and pushed my leg out a bit more, so as she had plenty of room to work on it.

We continued our conversation as her leg rubbed higher and higher making its way towards my crotch area. Then her foot raised and pushed against my groin. She slid her foot up and down in a very pleasing manner. After about two minutes of this she stopped and got up.

"I'm going to freshen up." She said seductively with a wink. I guessed what she wanted me to do by the sparkle in her eyes, so after she had been gone for a couple of seconds I got up too and went off in the same direc- tion. I was in the back halls of the bar trying to find where she might be when I was pulled into a utility room. I couldn't see her but I recognized the scent of her perfume.

We where locked in each others embrace immediately like lovers who were going to die at any moment.

I slid my hand down her back, across her butt, and down her leg until I reached the bottom of her skirt. I slid my hand under and began rubbing her thighs. They were bare and I quickly discovered that she wasn't wearing any panties either.

As I was felling this bird up she was undoing my pants and sliding her hand under my boxer shorts. She rubbed my dick with those long delicate fingers I had admired before and made me so excited that I wasn't sure how much more massaging I was going to be able to stand.

I moved my hand on down until it came to the outer fringes of pubic hair, then ran my fingers through it and came to her juicy cunt. I parted her vaginal lips with my middle finger then slid it in. What a delight to feel her all lubricated for me. I love that special slickness that a horny woman has when she's ready to be fucked. It makes me crazy.

She began to move her hips up and down shoving herself on to my finger. She made noises similar to purring as she got more and more excited. Her grip on my cock tightened as she was about to orgasm.

Finally, as she came her cunt juices flowed out in barrels covering my hand and down her inner thigh. Then my pretty baby started to stroke my cock in earnest.

I slipped my fingers out of her honey pot and tried to dry them on my shirt. Before I could react my little fuck doll slid down to her knees in front of me and placed her lips on my dick. She slid her mouth over the head of it and began to bob that pretty blonde head like there was no tomorrow.

It was like an erotic torture. She managed to take my full length in one swallow gagging just a bit. I could feel the head of my dick going down her throat which was a lot like entering a pussy.

I came about a minute later after one of the best blow- jobs of my life. There was no way I could have held out any longer, she really knew what she was doing. (She must have had a lot of experience, the way she played me like a musical instrument.)

After I came she stood up in front of me. I could hear her heavy breathing and could smell my come on her breath. I could tell that she was still as stimulated as I was. So I pressed her against the wall and slowly shoved her down to the floor of the utility room. With out asking I lifted her skirt and climbed on top of her small body.

I heard her moan as I arranged my dick at her opening and I readied for the wildest fuck of my lifetime. Pushing I entered her little piece of paradise with full thrust. She screamed with pain and pleasure as my cock shoved its way home, but after a few more strokes the noises she made were those of lust.

As my dick pounded her cunt my hands found themselves fondling her firm tits. (I had torn her blouse open. I can still remember the sound of her buttons flying around the room.)

After a minute she began to get more and more excited and clamped her shapely legs around my body and started to thrust onto my cock, enabling maximum penetration. On one particularly deep thrust I felt her vaginal walls clamp around my dick like a vice. When she began to climax her back arched up off the floor and she began to make hissing noises.

I wish the lights had been on so I could have seen her face as she clawed the air. It lasted for a few seconds, then she fell back and her body relaxed under me.

I had been effected by her emotional and physical climax and came in floods myself. I emptied spurt after spurt into her until I thought if I kept doing it much longer she might explode.

After gaining the most pleasure I could from her sweaty body I withdrew my semi-hard dick from her. My white cream spilled from her used cunt as I withdrew from her. (After a couple seconds it stopped.)

"Was it good for you baby?" I asked.

"Fuck yes lover, better than I can remember ever!" She replied as she panted for air. After a brief time of silence she said, "Well I guess I should be going now." She got up.

I just kind of laid there, still out of breath as she pulled her damaged blouse closed and adjusted her skirt to cover her come soaked cunt. And a moment later she was gone.

I never did see her again, and I didn't even know her name, but I've always had a thing for suicide blondes ever since.

Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

I think 2.6 should be patched first. Coming from the west siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide.

Re:Sure

[Horny Smurf]

I quite an ordinary guy. No big muscles, no huge dick, not even particularly handsome, but I'm a lucky person. You know, the kind of guy that fun things always seem to happen to. I can't remember the first time I real- ized that I was lucky, but I certainly remember one night in New York City, late in the evening when I was doing a little Bar hopping, when I walked into the local bar and seated myself.

I was expecting to have a regular Friday night but the fates dealt me a new card that night. I was on my second round when a woman approached my table and asked if the extra chair had been taken. I replied that it wasn't and she proceeded to sit down.

She had suicidal blonde hair and a voluptuous body. She wore a tight miniskirt and fishnet stockings and to flatter her large breasts she wore a low cut halter top that revealed a lot of cleavage. Her eyes were the wildest shade of green I had ever seen in eyes, very light and almost florescent but not quite.

We began to talk and continued a good conversation for about an hour when the subject suddenly switched to sex. (I think that she was the one who first brought the subject up.)

We discussed our personal sexual preferences for a while and we were both getting quite horny. (You know, flirting shamelessly with each other.)

Another fifteen minutes of steamy sex talk went by when I felt her leg sweep across my foot. Thinking nothing of it I continued talking. Then I felt her leg but this time it was rubbing up and down my shin. I got an instant hard-on and pushed my leg out a bit more, so as she had plenty of room to work on it.

We continued our conversation as her leg rubbed higher and higher making its way towards my crotch area. Then her foot raised and pushed against my groin. She slid her foot up and down in a very pleasing manner. After about two minutes of this she stopped and got up.

"I'm going to freshen up." She said seductively with a wink. I guessed what she wanted me to do by the sparkle in her eyes, so after she had been gone for a couple of seconds I got up too and went off in the same direc- tion. I was in the back halls of the bar trying to find where she might be when I was pulled into a utility room. I couldn't see her but I recognized the scent of her perfume.

We where locked in each others embrace immediately like lovers who were going to die at any moment.

I slid my hand down her back, across her butt, and down her leg until I reached the bottom of her skirt. I slid my hand under and began rubbing her thighs. They were bare and I quickly discovered that she wasn't wearing any panties either.

As I was felling this bird up she was undoing my pants and sliding her hand under my boxer shorts. She rubbed my dick with those long delicate fingers I had admired before and made me so excited that I wasn't sure how much more massaging I was going to be able to stand.

I moved my hand on down until it came to the outer fringes of pubic hair, then ran my fingers through it and came to her juicy cunt. I parted her vaginal lips with my middle finger then slid it in. What a delight to feel her all lubricated for me. I love that special slickness that a horny woman has when she's ready to be fucked. It makes me crazy.

She began to move her hips up and down shoving herself on to my finger. She made noises similar to purring as she got more and more excited. Her grip on my cock tightened as she was about to orgasm.

Finally, as she came her cunt juices flowed out in barrels covering my hand and down her inner thigh. Then my pretty baby started to stroke my cock in earnest.

I slipped my fingers out of her honey pot and tried to dry them on my shirt. Before I could react my little fuck doll slid down to her knees in front of me and placed her lips on my dick. She slid her mouth over the head of it and began to bob that pretty blonde head like there was no tomorrow.

It was like an erotic torture. She managed to take my full length in one swallow gagging just a bit. I could feel the head of my dick going down her throat which was a lot like entering a pussy.

I came about a minute later after one of the best blow- jobs of my life. There was no way I could have held out any longer, she really knew what she was doing. (She must have had a lot of experience, the way she played me like a musical instrument.)

After I came she stood up in front of me. I could hear her heavy breathing and could smell my come on her breath. I could tell that she was still as stimulated as I was. So I pressed her against the wall and slowly shoved her down to the floor of the utility room. With out asking I lifted her skirt and climbed on top of her small body.

I heard her moan as I arranged my dick at her opening and I readied for the wildest fuck of my lifetime. Pushing I entered her little piece of paradise with full thrust. She screamed with pain and pleasure as my cock shoved its way home, but after a few more strokes the noises she made were those of lust.

As my dick pounded her cunt my hands found themselves fondling her firm tits. (I had torn her blouse open. I can still remember the sound of her buttons flying around the room.)

After a minute she began to get more and more excited and clamped her shapely legs around my body and started to thrust onto my cock, enabling maximum penetration. On one particularly deep thrust I felt her vaginal walls clamp around my dick like a vice. When she began to climax her back arched up off the floor and she began to make hissing noises.

I wish the lights had been on so I could have seen her face as she clawed the air. It lasted for a few seconds, then she fell back and her body relaxed under me.

I had been effected by her emotional and physical climax and came in floods myself. I emptied spurt after spurt into her until I thought if I kept doing it much longer she might explode.

After gaining the most pleasure I could from her sweaty body I withdrew my semi-hard dick from her. My white cream spilled from her used cunt as I withdrew from her. (After a couple seconds it stopped.)

"Was it good for you baby?" I asked.

"Fuck yes lover, better than I can remember ever!" She replied as she panted for air. After a brief time of silence she said, "Well I guess I should be going now." She got up.

I just kind of laid there, still out of breath as she pulled her damaged blouse closed and adjusted her skirt to cover her come soaked cunt. And a moment later she was gone.

I never did see her again, and I didn't even know her name, but I've always had a thing for suicide blondes ever since.

Bleeh

[term_0z]

I will not be updating for a while. The neverwinter nights developers should be as fast to release their linux client, as the linux developers are to release kernels. Good job linux hackers. Bad job neverwinternights crew.

Re:Bleeh

[Horny Smurf]

I quite an ordinary guy. No big muscles, no huge dick, not even particularly handsome, but I'm a lucky person. You know, the kind of guy that fun things always seem to happen to. I can't remember the first time I real- ized that I was lucky, but I certainly remember one night in New York City, late in the evening when I was doing a little Bar hopping, when I walked into the local bar and seated myself.

I was expecting to have a regular Friday night but the fates dealt me a new card that night. I was on my second round when a woman approached my table and asked if the extra chair had been taken. I replied that it wasn't and she proceeded to sit down.

She had suicidal blonde hair and a voluptuous body. She wore a tight miniskirt and fishnet stockings and to flatter her large breasts she wore a low cut halter top that revealed a lot of cleavage. Her eyes were the wildest shade of green I had ever seen in eyes, very light and almost florescent but not quite.

We began to talk and continued a good conversation for about an hour when the subject suddenly switched to sex. (I think that she was the one who first brought the subject up.)

We discussed our personal sexual preferences for a while and we were both getting quite horny. (You know, flirting shamelessly with each other.)

Another fifteen minutes of steamy sex talk went by when I felt her leg sweep across my foot. Thinking nothing of it I continued talking. Then I felt her leg but this time it was rubbing up and down my shin. I got an instant hard-on and pushed my leg out a bit more, so as she had plenty of room to work on it.

We continued our conversation as her leg rubbed higher and higher making its way towards my crotch area. Then her foot raised and pushed against my groin. She slid her foot up and down in a very pleasing manner. After about two minutes of this she stopped and got up.

"I'm going to freshen up." She said seductively with a wink. I guessed what she wanted me to do by the sparkle in her eyes, so after she had been gone for a couple of seconds I got up too and went off in the same direc- tion. I was in the back halls of the bar trying to find where she might be when I was pulled into a utility room. I couldn't see her but I recognized the scent of her perfume.

We where locked in each others embrace immediately like lovers who were going to die at any moment.

I slid my hand down her back, across her butt, and down her leg until I reached the bottom of her skirt. I slid my hand under and began rubbing her thighs. They were bare and I quickly discovered that she wasn't wearing any panties either.

As I was felling this bird up she was undoing my pants and sliding her hand under my boxer shorts. She rubbed my dick with those long delicate fingers I had admired before and made me so excited that I wasn't sure how much more massaging I was going to be able to stand.

I moved my hand on down until it came to the outer fringes of pubic hair, then ran my fingers through it and came to her juicy cunt. I parted her vaginal lips with my middle finger then slid it in. What a delight to feel her all lubricated for me. I love that special slickness that a horny woman has when she's ready to be fucked. It makes me crazy.

She began to move her hips up and down shoving herself on to my finger. She made noises similar to purring as she got more and more excited. Her grip on my cock tightened as she was about to orgasm.

Finally, as she came her cunt juices flowed out in barrels covering my hand and down her inner thigh. Then my pretty baby started to stroke my cock in earnest.

I slipped my fingers out of her honey pot and tried to dry them on my shirt. Before I could react my little fuck doll slid down to her knees in front of me and placed her lips on my dick. She slid her mouth over the head of it and began to bob that pretty blonde head like there was no tomorrow.

It was like an erotic torture. She managed to take my full length in one swallow gagging just a bit. I could feel the head of my dick going down her throat which was a lot like entering a pussy.

I came about a minute later after one of the best blow- jobs of my life. There was no way I could have held out any longer, she really knew what she was doing. (She must have had a lot of experience, the way she played me like a musical instrument.)

After I came she stood up in front of me. I could hear her heavy breathing and could smell my come on her breath. I could tell that she was still as stimulated as I was. So I pressed her against the wall and slowly shoved her down to the floor of the utility room. With out asking I lifted her skirt and climbed on top of her small body.

I heard her moan as I arranged my dick at her opening and I readied for the wildest fuck of my lifetime. Pushing I entered her little piece of paradise with full thrust. She screamed with pain and pleasure as my cock shoved its way home, but after a few more strokes the noises she made were those of lust.

As my dick pounded her cunt my hands found themselves fondling her firm tits. (I had torn her blouse open. I can still remember the sound of her buttons flying around the room.)

After a minute she began to get more and more excited and clamped her shapely legs around my body and started to thrust onto my cock, enabling maximum penetration. On one particularly deep thrust I felt her vaginal walls clamp around my dick like a vice. When she began to climax her back arched up off the floor and she began to make hissing noises.

I wish the lights had been on so I could have seen her face as she clawed the air. It lasted for a few seconds, then she fell back and her body relaxed under me.

I had been effected by her emotional and physical climax and came in floods myself. I emptied spurt after spurt into her until I thought if I kept doing it much longer she might explode.

After gaining the most pleasure I could from her sweaty body I withdrew my semi-hard dick from her. My white cream spilled from her used cunt as I withdrew from her. (After a couple seconds it stopped.)

"Was it good for you baby?" I asked.

"Fuck yes lover, better than I can remember ever!" She replied as she panted for air. After a brief time of silence she said, "Well I guess I should be going now." She got up.

I just kind of laid there, still out of breath as she pulled her damaged blouse closed and adjusted her skirt to cover her come soaked cunt. And a moment later she was gone.

I never did see her again, and I didn't even know her name, but I've always had a thing for suicide blondes ever since.

this is silly

[edrugtrader]

there will always be a kernel in development and one being stabalized.... its a wash either way.

i would recommend the stabalization of 2.6 before the branch of 2.7 (the initial arguement) and i think the flip side is incorrect... just because 2.7 is 'in the works' doesn't mean that the 2.6 hackers are going to take a nap on their work

Re:this is silly

[alonsoac]

i would recommend the stabalization of 2.6 before the branch of 2.7

But that makes no sense why would we have a 2.6 release if it is not yet stable? What happened in 2.5 then? Why was it changed to 2.6 if it was not stable?
2.6.0 should be a STABLE realease right?

Re:this is silly

[kasperd]

2.6.0 should be a STABLE realease right?

Yes, you are right, 2.6.0 should be a stable release. And hopefully it will at least be a stable release for all the people that developed and tested 2.5.x. But it is practically impossible to make a piece of software without bugs, so when 2.6.0 is released there will still be bugs to fix. When the version number changes from 2.5.x to 2.6.0 more people will start using it and consequently remaining bugs will be found faster.

Of course I hope 2.6.0 will not be released with known bugs, and will be intensively tested before release. But that is the best we can hope for.

keep it stable...

[dehex]

Keeping the kernal stable is much more important than adding more features. That's why most of us have migrated to linux in the first place.

If I don't have to reboot in 6 months or beyond, then I'm happy with that.

Re:keep it stable...

[zmxncbv]

its linux i can never be stable.

Re:keep it stable...

[CowbertPrime]

You mean this is why most of us have migrated to FreeBSD in the second place :)
FBSD has both concurrent stable and experimental development. The stable configuration includes kernel and userland source and is very suitable for production environments when non-security related change is almost never desired.

Re:keep it stable...

[Anonymous Coward]

While we're starting holy wars...

Oh you must mean OpenBSD! The one OS in the world where more time is spent squashing bugs than adding new features.

An age old question

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the different colored m&m's actually taste different or is it all just psychology when someone says "greeen is the best"

Re:An age old question

[Anonymous Coward]

Well green is supposed to increase your sex drive or make you horny, something like that.

http://www.allaboutsex.org/Green_MandMs.html

Why can't they just make it work?

[on by]

Stupid fucks. Which version is actually going to be useful? 8.3? 10.2?

Re:Why can't they just make it work?

[Felt Tip Pen]

I know what you mean. Everyone always talks about how much more stable GNU/Linux is compared to Windows. That's why I switched. I was using Windows 2000 Professional, but I haven't noticed much of an honest improvement. Sure, it doesn't crash as hard as Windows ME and earlier do, but what's the point of stability if my web-browser (one of 310981209 to choose from) crashes every ten minutes. Is the the browser? Is it some faceless kdieninitd arts oaf esd bonobo program crashing in the background? I guess I'll spend MY friday night re-installing Windows 2000.. :(

Re:Why can't they just make it work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another one of thes people complaining about Linux and just about to install Windows 2000.

Can you please tell me how much you are being paid to post these messages and if it lucrative - maybe I should test it too ?

Is it still 30 pieces od silver or what ?

Re:Why can't they just make it work?

[Felt Tip Pen]

Sorry, you have to be able to spell before they'll hire you.

Re:Why can't they just make it work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, being able to spell is a clear indication that it's not real nerd - thus it must be a troll.

A Good Thing...

[phraktyl]

I would release them at the same time. Just as now, with 2.4 and 2.5, there are people who are very good at stabilizing current code, and people very good at developing new code. Some folks can't stand working on new things when the old need work, and vice versa.

I see this as having two benifits. First, it will help with the ``Most things work pretty well---let's go ahead and release it.'' attitude. The 2.4 series has only recently gotten stable enough to reliably use in a production environment, and not everyone agrees on that even.

Second, it will allow people to focus on what they are good at. The 2.6 series will mature much faster without adding new features in every release. Sure, there are bound to be a few gotchas, but if the focus is on stabilizing the code, they will be out by the 2.6.3 or 2.6.4 release. At the same time, people will be adding to 2.7, which should mean that there is much less time between stable kernel series releases.

I'm all for it!

--Wyatt

Re:A Good Thing...

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Also it will probably mean that it will not be such a long time between major releases...

Re:A Good Thing...

[Felt Tip Pen]

The Linux kernel needs a severe restructuring of it's development model to stay afloat. Bad Things Will Happen (TM) if we keep on like we are now. Kernel differences between distributions are making it even worse. Nevermind becoming a viable business/corporate solution, let's fix what's wrong before it's too late!

Re:A Good Thing...

[reaper20]

bah ... no it doesn't ... sure somethings could be done better - but when it comes to kernel development as a whole, its already broken about every rule to 'proper software' development ... and it's doing ok so far.

The difference between kernel distributions is not really a big deal. Maybe in a close source system it would be ... but as long as everything stays open, its no big deal. I can grab the source to the latest redhat kernel and compile it on a debian system. That's what makes linux so great in the first place.

Re:A Good Thing...

[Felt Tip Pen]

We had huge problems a while back, they still pop up due to this. We all of a sudden had to start dealing with some HUGE (multiple GB apiece) files. It was a nightmare determining which kernels had ext3 support in them, which distros/patchlevels had all the correct utils for ext3 support, whatever. And people had done exactly what you described, recompiled their own kernels with god-knows-what kind of configs, switched distros..Ugh.

UnitedLinux is a step in the right direction, but something more granular is needed.

Re:A Good Thing...

[HiThere]

No, the two versions sholdn't be released at the same time. Close, perhaps, but not the same.

It would probably be ok if there were, say, 2.6 were released no more than a week before 2.7, but I'm a bit dubious. OTOH, I don't know just how stable 2.5.99999 is.

It seems to me that the plan used last time worked out well. Not perfect, but well enough that I wouldn't want to tinker with it. Release the new version as current, and then wait a bit for more problems to show up. "We won't find any more problems unless we get some new testers in, so release it now." (LT being paraphrased.)

That was the right time to release it. Then the next round of debugging happened. Then the 2.5 branch was forked off.

Perhaps, as an intermediate step, submissions for the 2.7 branch could be accepted, and placed in a queue for evaluation after 2.6 was released.

I can just picture him slapping his nuts on /. ...

[Linus Turdballs]

I really wish michael would quit wanking over the keyboard...

*wank*
Offtopic!
*wank*
Redundant!
*wank*
Flamebait!
*wank*
Troll!!
*wank*
*wank*
*wank*
Bitch slap!!!!

kernal

[Anonymous Coward]

It's spelled "kernel".

You must be one hell of a lunix user.

Re:kernal

[Anonymous Coward]

There's more than a kernel (heh) of truth to that, since Commodore called it a kernal, and Lunix runs on the C-64.

Another interesting question

[Anonymous Coward]

when a man can do "the splits" all the down to the ground does it mean he isn't a man or that he is gay?

Funny jokes by poopbot

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats black, blue and green and doesnt like sex?
The Girl Scout locked in my basement.
Whats the worst part about having sex with a six year-old?
Getting the blood out of your clown suit.
Whats the best thing about getting a hand job from a five year-old?
That little hand makes your thing look really huge.
Guy comes home from work to find his girlfriend sitting on the porch, crying.
Whats wrong, honey?
Im leaving you! I just found out youre a pdophile!
Pdophile? Why, thats a pretty big word for a ten year-old.
How can you tell when your sisters on her period?
When your dads dick tastes like blood!
Two pdophiles are lying on a beach tanning, one turns to the other and says, Excuse me, youre in my son.
What is the sickest sound you hear when fucking a nine year-old?
Her hips snapping!
What is the best sound you hear when fucking a 13 year-old?
Her hips snapping!
Whats 18 inches long, blue, veiny, and makes a woman cry?
Crib death.
How could the mans seven year-old son tell that his dad had fucked his eight year-old sister? His dads weiner tasted like blood!
Watson returns home to find Holmes in bed with a child. He shouts, Is this some sort of a schoolgirl?
Holmes replies, Elementary, my dear Watson.
So I was having sex with my girlfriend, and I decided I wanted to get kinky and try and do her in the ass. So I slipped around back; she looked over her shoulder at me and said, My, how presumptuous of you. I said, Presumptuous? Thats a big word for a ten year-old.
Two guys are walking down the street when a beautiful woman passes. The first guy says, Damn! Id love to tear her clothes off, do her in the rear, smear my fces all over her, slice off her breasts, chop her into little pieces, put her in a garbage bag and toss her into the river!
Second guy says, Yuck! Youre a sick bastard!
First guy says, Whatre you? A fag?
A kindergarten teacher is asking the kids what their father does for a living. All the kids answer except for Little Johnny. The teacher asks Little Johnny what his Dad does and Johnny replies, My dad is dead.
The teacher says, Thats terribile, but what did he do before he died?
Little Johnny replies, He turned blue and shit all over himself!
A guy calls in sick to work.
Whats wrong? asks the boss.
Im sick, the guy replies.
You sound all right.
No, Im really sick. Believe me.
Listen, you were fine yesterday, and we have a lot of work today. I want you in here. You cant be that sick!
Dude, I just banged my sister. Dont tell me Im not sick.
A little girl accompanied her father to the barbershop. While her dad received a haircut, the little girl stood next to the barber chair, enjoying a snack cake. The barber smiled at her and said, Sweetheart, youre going to get hair on your Twinkie.
I know, the little girl replied. Im gonna get tits, too.
An older man and a small boy walk hand in hand through the woods.
Boy: These woods sure are spooky!
Man: You think youre scared, Ive gotta walk out of here alone.
Whats the difference between Neil Armstrong and Michael Jackson?
One walked on the moon, and the other rapes little boys.
Has anyone read Michael Jacksons new book, The Ins and Outs of Child Rearing?
Q: Whats the difference between a dead baby and a golden delicious apple?
A: I dont cum all over the golden delicious apple before I take a bite out of it.
Q: Whats the difference between a dead baby and my girlfriend?
A: I dont kiss my girlfriend after sex.
Q: Whats the difference between a dead baby and a table?
A: You cant fuck a table.
Q: Whats special about a dead baby over all other forms of life?
A: You can achieve deep throat from whichever way you enter.
Q: What do you have when you have four dead babies, take away two, and add five more?
A: An orgy!
Q: Whats better than three 14 year-olds?
A: 14 three year-olds.
Q: Whats white and bobs up and down in a babys crib?
A: A pdophiles ass.
Q: Whats the safest way to play with a baby?
A: With a condom.
Q: Whats more fun than feeling up a dead baby?
A: Feeling up a dead baby with three nipples.
Q: What does a baby and a Pinto have in common?
A: Theyre fun to ride until they die.
Q: What do you get whan you dislocate a dead babys jaw?
A: Deep throat.
Q: Whats the difference between a baby and a grandmother?
A: Grandmothers dont die when you fuck them in the ass.
Q: Whats the best sound in the world?
A: Hearing dead babys hips crack under pressure!
Q: Whats worse than a having sex with a dead baby?
A: Having sex with a dead baby filled with razor blades.
Q: How do you stop a baby from choking?
A: Take your dick out of its mouth.
Q: Whats worse than finding a dead baby on your pillow in the morning?
A: Realizing you were drunk and made love to it the night before.
Q: How do you make a baby cry twice?
A: Wipe your bloody cock on his teddy bear.
Whats better than sex with a twelve year-old boy?
Absolutely nothing.

- poopbot: because even your grandmother can use lunix

Comic Book Store Guy says...

[Anonymous Coward]

"2.6 and 2.7 Release Management" - Most Boring Slashdot Topic Ever!

Standard resource allocation problem

[maddugan]

Isn't this a problem faced by most software projects? Stabilize resent release (bug/feature fix) or move team to next version/revision.

I would recommend dividing the team up.

Stabilizing the stable branch?

[Hrunting]

See, to me when someone calls it a "stable release", that means it's already been stabilized. Sure, you're going to have the occasional bug fix here and there, but actual "stabilization" should've been done in the 2.5.99 range, ie. the previous development branch. Once the stable tree is released, there shouldn't be a need to stabilize it and branching the new development tree right then makes sense. There should not be an "development" per se in the stable release after that, only the occasional maintenance.

If the kernel maintainers would just grasp this one simple point, maybe this issue wouldn't be one, and maybe people wouldn't laugh at the .0 release of the kernel.

Re:Stabilizing the stable branch?

[Verizon Guy]

What are you talking about, "not stable"...?

Linux doesn't crash. It can't; it's simply not possible... Slashdot told me so. They said that Linux crashing would defy the laws of physics, or something.

Re:Stabilizing the stable branch?

[Raul654]

Wow... I can almost feel the whooshing of thousands of fingers belonging to thousands of moderators racing to mod you down.

Re:Stabilizing the stable branch?

[Error27]

A bazillion more people test the kernel after it hits the .0 mark and so of course mistakes are going to show up.

If you need stable kernels you should get them from Linux vendors like Red Hat and Suse etc. That's the way it has been for a long time.

Re:Stabilizing the stable branch?

[cpeterso]

When tons of people starting using 2.6.0, they will find new bugs. These bugs would also be in 2.7.0. Both kernel branches would need to be fixed BY HAND, increasing dev and testing time. I think it makes more sense for 2.7.0 to start with a "stable" stable 2.6.x.

Re:Stabilizing the stable branch?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't feed the trolls.

Re:Stabilizing the stable branch?

[cornette]

What do you mean "by hand"? Surely whatever they use for source control allows changes to simply be migrated from one branch to another.

Re:Stabilizing the stable branch?

[LinuxCumShot]

Its like mac os x, it's crash proof!

Re:Stabilizing the stable branch?

[LinuxCumShot]

I don't think linux has source control. you'd need visual source safe for that.

Re:Stabilizing the stable branch?

[Anonymous Coward]

most kernel hackers keep their own branches in whatever version control systems they use .. i know linus uses one but it's not cvs it's one of the commerical ones i heard.

Re:Stabilizing the stable branch?

[antirename]

Offtopic, but a damn good sig.

Re:Stabilizing the stable branch?

[WNight]

Stable refers to the interfaces, more than the product stability.

It's good when a "stable" kernel doesn't crash, but that's not actually what the word means. Look at Mozilla, it was stable, in that I often had 20 windows open for weeks at a time in Win2k (yeah, Win2k having an uptime of weeks, but really, it happened...) and Mozilla wouldn't crash once. But they didn't call it 1.0 until they stabilized the interfaces so you could use pluggins and addons without having to upgrade them for every minor update.

It just happens that when you're adding functionality you often break backwards compatibility (hence, unstable interfaces) and make things crash (unstable in the other sense.)

It's like 'Free', it's got multiple meanings. Linux 2.(even) releases are stable in the sense of unchanging. Releases that don't crash are stable in the meaning we normally use.

Re:Stabilizing the stable branch?

[LoonXTall]

"Linux doesn't crash. It can't; it's simply not possible... Slashdot told me so. They said that Linux crashing would defy the laws of physics, or something."

Obviously they've never tried to change VTs when X was busy starting. (2.4.17, stock Linus kernel)

Re:Stabilizing the stable branch?

[kasperd]

i know linus uses one but it's not cvs it's one of the commerical ones i heard.

The term commercial might depend on your definition of the word. The tool in question is BitKeeper. BitKeeper is not free software, but you don't have to pay for using it in Linux development. The use of BitKeeper by a number of kernel hackers does not affect the license of Linux itself.

On the kernel mailing list a few people has been flamed for requesting that kernel documentation does not mention BitKeeper.

Re:Stabilizing the stable branch?

[Chops]

If the kernel maintainers would just grasp this one simple point, maybe this issue wouldn't be one, and maybe people wouldn't laugh at the .0 release of the kernel.

The problem is that "stable" can't be added as a feature; it has to be bought with testing (ergo bugfixing), and you run into a chicken-and-egg problem trying to get people to test stuff that isn't "stable" yet. Each new level of supposed trustworthiness (2.3.x -> 2.4.0pre -> 2.4.x -> distro releases) brings orders of magnitude more users, and inevitably uncovers oodles of bugs.
"Stable" refers to the halfway-frozen API in even-numbered releases; it doesn't mean 2.4.x is not expected to crash. Stability is empirical.

Re:Stabilizing the stable branch?

[FooBarWidget]

Slashdot may tell you that Linux doesn't crash, but obviously the rest of the world (which are all Microsoft fanboys) do not agree.

Windows XP doesn't crash. It can't; it's simply not possible. My friends/classmates/people on my contact list/the local MCSE/MSN.com told me so. They said that Windows XP crashing would defy the laws of physics, or something.
And as a professor on a university ever said: "Windows XP's stability rivals that of Unix".

Wether you believe that or not, that's up to you (I don't). But most people actually believe that.

Re:Stabilizing the stable branch?

[Sir Joltalot]

RedHat and SuSe and other distro vendors do patch their kernels, and sometimes these patches are for stability and security reasons, and are good to have. Sometimes they also royally fuck things up.

A while back a patched RedHat kernel had a pretty bad bug in it that caused hard locks in X with ATi chipsets (2.4.9-something, I think). This particular bug was specific only to the RedHat kernel.

So, maybe the distro vendors fix some bugs, but they also introduce bugs of their own. I've used both stock kernels and distro kernels in production environments and haven't noticed particularly more or less bugs in either type.

Re:Stabilizing the stable branch?

[Error27]

The difference really is not in the patches that they add but the testing that they do. Some of the stock kernels are very bad. They might not compile for example.

You're probably right that there is not always a lot of difference between stock kernels and vendor kernels. But I always tell people to only use vendor kernels, because if they break then the people can blame Red Hat or Suse but don't hassle the developers.

The post I was replying to was belly aching about .0 releases and thus falls under the "hassling developers" catagory. I'd be willing to bet that Red Hat and Suse didn't ship with the .0 version because they knew it wasn't trusted.

Mandrake may have shipped with it... They like to live on the edge.

But yes. You're right. There is nothing wrong with using stock kernels in production. I believe that Debian only uses stock kernels.

The backport concept

[jhines]

From the bsd world, there is the concept of "backport" which is where a feature in the development kernal is ported back to a previous stable kernal series.

Great for bug fixes, and other things in the middle ground.

Certainly if there is interest, a set of patches to a stable kernel, or even another -someone kernel series can be developed. If these turn out to be in demand, and stable enoug, they can be officially included.

Re:The backport concept

[Anonymous Coward]

Gah, there's such an obvious joke here that I won't even bother saying it. Just mod me Flamebait and get it over with.

Re:The backport concept

[Felt Tip Pen]

This "backport concept" is what made early 2.4 kernal revisions a total nightmare!

Re:The backport concept

[AxelTorvalds]

Backporting has been a stability problem and a source of great debate in the community.

First. The kernel is pretty damn stable. The instability people talk about are usually extreme cases or performance that is less than optimal. I have yet to see a 2.4.8 or later kernel lock up or panic on my typical hardware and I've got 3 machines running 24x7. I don't count the first 7 cuts becuase I was doing development on them and going to great pains to track them and they collectively should have been maybe to of the last 2.3.99 releases.

Linux is large. There are hundreds of regular contributors as well as a number of companies doing stuff. 2.3 lasted way to long and so everybody wanted to get their stuff in to 2.4 because 2.6 could be 2 years away after 2.4 came out. That was a mistake. The kernel underwent a lot of change during 2.3.99 and people were still adding tons of stuff. There were bitter fights about what should go in and when. You hate to be SGI, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars (I'm guessing that's the man hour cost) porting SGI and not make the cut and then wait 2 more years.

At the same time the releases need to be tempered. People say 2.0.40 is a bad sign because it needed 40 patches. We could be on kernel 4.2 now if we made the releases closer and that just creates more confusion in a lot of ways also. 2.4 took way too long and too much happened. 2.6 will be much better and the community needs to see that and get used to 6 to 9 to 18 months for a major release. Companies need to understand that and make their investments accordingly. It's difficult though because there are so many independant people developing stuff they are planning to get in and it all can't go to Linus when he says he's getting ready to lock it down.

I think if anything, maybe 2.7 should branch off before 2.6 is cut. Linux and the team and go through the big items and determine where and when and then make some timelines accordingly. You give people working on the bigger things a place to put their stuff. Then the final 2.5 releases shouldn't be as rushed.

Re:The backport concept

[jhines]

In the case of BSD, many of the changes are for other than kernel items, which doesn't apply to Linux.

For the kernel itself, it would have to be fairly minor changes, or possibly stub or future compatiblity reasons.

I certainly agree that the average administrator needs to be able to rely on as stable.

Again, the most common need would be a bug that affected both stable and development versions.

Re:The backport concept

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that BSDland uses CVS instead of some single dude (ok, 3 single dudes) managing all the patches himself.

Don't forget the past

[brunes69]

A large reason for the awful VM mess that 2.4 was in around 2.4.8 - 2.4.11 or so was largely due to the fact that a totally new VM was just kind of "thrown in" to the "stable" branch, probably mainly cause there wasn't a 2.5 branch yet at that point (as I recall). This is the sort of thing that branching earlier would hopefully prevent. While the stable branch may not have some of the "bells and whistles" it could have gained from keeping the branches together, at least hopefully a mess like that can be avoided.

Then again, that's just my opinion :)

Re:Don't forget the past

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll call bullshit on this one.

I'd say that the VM changes shouldn't have been pushed into a "stable" branch like that. The code should just have been shelved to be used in 2.5 -- with the possibility to backport to 2.4 if it was deemed necessary and/or useful.

All that forking the dev branch early does is move a whole bunch of developers away from fixing old code to breaking new code. That's not exactly the effect we're looking for here.

Re:Don't forget the past

[Anonymous Coward]

The VM switches took place because the VM that shipped with 2.4 was broken. Not just sort of broke, but completely broken. Very few people understood how the fucking thing worked, so it sparked an urge to replace it.

Pushing 2.4 too soon is what caused that mess, not starting 2.5 so late. That's why 2.5 was about a year after 2.4, 2.4 was such a broken piece of crap.

Re:Don't forget the past

[gmack]

Actually that was more of a problem with the old VM not being stable enough and Linus taking a risk on a new one.

Re:Don't forget the past

[Anonymous Coward]

This is true. The VM that came with 2.4 was so broken that we were seeing systems go down with massive data loss almost within hours of extensive use.

The old VM has 4 different major bugs:

1. Concurrent processes could not place deadlocks on sibling process in SMP mode.

2. Utilization of VM code on tread process in UP and SMP systems were so bad (under load - ( specially when the 4gig mem system was used )), that more preformance would have been got by running the 2.0 series rather than 2.4's VM.

3. No checks were placed in thread corruption and bucket fill code, which caused other nice things under load.

4. The enter beast was so unyeilding, it was known that the only one person who ever understood it, had to keep a journal just to keep track of the beast (Seriously). This was one of the major reasons that ticked off Linus and I believe the reason why he pushed the new VM.

But the 2.4 series was a major testbest. The moment we released it without having a 2.5 out, ppl started testing 2.4 in much more demand than they did the previous development series. This gave feedback in a week that we could not have got in six months for the development kernel.

The new VM has been stabilized and it's working wonderfully, if you use any kernel above 2.4.16, you should be fine.

jr

Re:Don't forget the past

[Anonymous Coward]

JR,

Did you write the AMD MP code? I saw jr all over it. I got a question about running 4 AMD MP systems in a modified hub node model. When I try to run the sytem Linux just recognizes 3 of the four, nothing gets the fourth processor reconigzed, this is nto so under w2k. I could give you some logs if you dont mind, can i mail them to you?

Re:Don't forget the past

[Anonymous Coward]

The code should just have been shelved to be used in 2.5 -- with the possibility to backport to 2.4 if it was deemed necessary and/or useful. .. All that forking the dev branch early does is move a whole bunch of developers away from fixing old code to breaking new code. That's not exactly the effect we're looking for here.


I could be wrong, but i believe the important thing to keep in mind is that some people would just rather break new code than fix old code.

And, since Linux is not some kind of paid corporation with top-down control, there's no way to make these people concentrate on fixing old code. So they won't. They'll just go off and write new stuff anyway. Then when we get to the next dev kernel, we'll have to go gather up all the random uncoordinated new-stuff patches scattered all over the internet..

We might as well recognize linux kernel development is no longer a "ok, here's a beta.. now here's a final.. now here's a beta... now here's a final". It's a large river of projects being done by a large, disparate bunch of people as they need their kernels able to do something. Linux has become too big for it to be practical anymore to try to pretend the entire development is following some cohesive, planned procedure. You can ensure that everyone who's actually being PAID to write the linux kernel is following a cohesive development process, but you should acknowledge the chaos outside the core group's door once in awhile.

Re:Don't forget the past

[Anonymous Coward]

Take the first letters of each of the points and construct the hidden 31337 word. Very nice trolling.

Re:Don't forget the past

[Boing]

Advantageous as it may be to have gotten that much test data so quickly, the whole reason for having a development branch is so that people don't have to be guinea pigs for unstable code.

I respect how hard it is to work out the kinks without a lot of eyes, but the goal should be to minimize the number of potential bugs in the stable version, while giving people the option to try the latest-and-greatest (at their own risk) if they so choose.

I don't have these problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Windows.

One thing that I noticed

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that trolls are really good at getting the first five to 10 posts all to themselves. But then karma whores swoop in pretty fast right after that. Where are all the follow up trolls?

Re:One thing that I noticed

[Anonymous Coward]

Us trolls are mostly either scripts that constantly reload the page and post when something new shows up, or we're lifeless wankers that sit here doing that ourselves.

The karma whores are the ones that are out there driving expensive sports cars and having wild anal sex with beautiful women. These are the ones that wrapped your underwear around your head during gym class yesterday.

Or haven't you been paying attention?

Re:One thing that I noticed

[Linus Turdballs]

"These are the ones that wrapped your underwear around your head during gym class yesterday."

Maybe if instead of going to gym class you hid in the closet (peering into the girls' locker room while you're at it, why not?), you wouldn't get yourself "wedged." My good friend Alan Cox used to hide all class, but he liked to pass time by sniffing the guy's und--- Hmm, I've said too much already. Sorry, I must go.

In with the new, out with the old

[electricmonk]

It can only lead to improvement. Remember the whole affair of dropping in a completely new VM right in the middle of the supposedly "stable" 2.4 kernel branch? BSD has never had problems like these, and it pains me to see Linux doing silly stuff like that. I await the day when I can safely assume that something located in the "stable" branch really is stable.

What are the proposed new features in 2.5 and 2.6

[Anonymous Coward]

The linux kernel,. besides stability .. what sort of things do they want top add/improve?

better networking? better I/O performance?

what about multiple CPU support?

The most important thing for me would be resource management features .. such as being able to allocate how much CPU, memory, or disk space a particular user or process can use. These are things that solaris has had for a long time .. and it seems that linux kernel developers arent interested in adding those features .. how can linux hope to take over the enterprise server market without it?

Does anyone have any info on what's happening in the area of adding resource management features to the linux kernel?

Actually any info on what cool features they are working on for future releases would be appreciated

Wow, low modding right now

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean there is almost no modding down of many of the 0 scored trolls. Seems like there might be a problem with the bitchslap script, but that no suprise I mean linux and perl and mysql. They go perfect together since they are all so perfectly lame.

Re:Wow, low modding right now

[Linus Turdballs]

The michael.pl script is broken at the moment. It dumped core halfway through the do_wank() subroutine, taking jamie.pl and CowBoi::Kneel.pm down with it. CmdrTaco and Homos are still picking up the pieces and trying to put it back together. Rest assured michael.pl will be wanking and slapping all you trolls back down in no time.

Simultaneous Release...

[Nighttime]

...would be a good idea IMHO if this kept Linus away from working on the stable branch.

Look at what happened with 2.4, we had the change to VM, 2.4.11 which needed immediate patching and is tagged as dontuse, 2.4.13 similar problems, 2.4.15-greased-turkey released by Linus for Thanksgiving and a nice syncing problem.

When it comes to deciding what is and is not allowed into the kernels the buck stops with Linus. This is why I think Linus should stick with the development kernels where a major change can have all its kinks worked out in relative safety. The stable branches should be maintained by someone who only has authority to accept and apply bug fixes.

Re:Simultaneous Release...

[Raul654]

Wow... what skill. You condensed like 8 pages of debate into 3 short paragraphs. And this is the best point I've heard so far -- the guys on the mailing list are rather averse to saying that linus couldn't maintain a kernel to save his life, so just get {alan, marciello, et al} on stable as soon as it comes out, and branch the dev one shortly thereafter.

a bad thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish Linux development would stop and people would just switch to FreeBSD. It already has many of the things that Linux is wasting human lives re-inventing and re-implementing, many times, incorrectly, such as a stable VM system. Sigh.

...trolls and such like...

[splint3r]

I like reading the -1 posts when I'm bored. They're funny as hell. The first few on this topic were especially funny/stupid. Alarmingly though, I often find things which *I don't* think should have been modded down into oblivion, and so I always wonder if there are good things I'm missing because of this modding.

Re:...trolls and such like...

[Tassleman]

That's why I generally browse at -1, most of the good shit is down there.

Re:...trolls and such like...

[splint3r]

This is fscking ridiculas! Why on earth did I get a -1 and the reply got a +1!? Redundant? Your godamn mama's redundant. Bitch.

Now I'm pissed and it's the mod's fault. Godamn nazis.

I must type this quickly

[Anonymous Coward]

The scripts seem to reactivated and I wanted to get in at least one more post before I have to rotate IP numbers.

Interesting?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Not even remotely, screw u

Re:What are the proposed new features in 2.5 and 2

[spencerogden]

When it comes to how much resources a particular use can, well use, PAM is your friend. It can limit data, ram usage, CPU time, number of processes, and user priority.

Problems with linux development

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux kernel development is slowing down rapidly with current economic situation. In the next year or so Linux could be facing the same situation that FreeBSD is now. I mean windows will always be around as long as Microsoft is around and Microsoft isn't going anywhere but linux is just a bunch of dudes hacking. What happens when Linus, Alan and others start getting bored and give up the JKH did.

Re:Problems with linux development

[Felt Tip Pen]

Marcelo got into kernel hacking when he was like 16. So what if our current Gods decide to leave? They would be missed, for sure, but there'd surely be someone new, hungry, and just as skilled ready to take their place.

That's why Linux can be counted on. NT4? MS just up and decides to drop support. Interactive Unix? Sun just up and decides to drop support. Thank god IBM has kept up with OS/2..for now..

Re:Problems with linux development

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually 14.34 years. By 15.40 first patch was accepted :)

Slashdot

[Catskul]

Most of our opinions on this really dont matter. I have run unstable kernels for a long time and never had any trouble with them. The only time it is really an issue is with production servers, which most of us dont run. I think those of us who dont run production servers should refrain from submitting our opinion and leave the line clear for those who it really affects.

Re:Slashdot

[dvdeug]

The only time it is really an issue is with production servers, which most of us dont run.

I want and need for my kernel to magically just run. Yes, I'm a Debian maintainer running unstable on my own machines, but kernels are neither my forte nor my interest.

Re:Slashdot

[Digital Anvil]

All our opinions matter. It is just that these are not all heard where they need to be. Even if we don't run production level servers would we not want to see the kernel development work a little smoother and not have major problems arise in a stable release, such as the VM in kernel 2.4.11.

Isn't the kernel made by the people for the people. I think we should all voice our opinions and those that get heard great, maybe they will make a difference.

I for one would like to the see the development kernel be forked as soon as possible and let Linus continue his work on that, and have the new stable kernel maintain to the point it is stable and is being fixed of bugs.

Re:Slashdot

[GigsVT]

I think they are heard, and considered, where it matters. Slashdot was the first place I saw a big clamor for the "instant branching" that is proposed here.

Even if Cox or Linus isn't reading regularly, it helps ideas get mindshare with lots of smaller players, who can spin the debate threads on LKML toward one side or the other.
That doesn't mean Linus et al will agree, but his judgement in the past has usually been pretty good, which is a good thing, democracy is not a particularly good method of software engineering.

Re:Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

> Most of our opinions on this really dont matter. I have run unstable kernels for a long time and never had any trouble with them. The only time it is really an issue is with production servers, which most of us dont run. I think those of us who dont run production servers should refrain from submitting our opinion and leave the line clear for those who it really affects.

I disagree on what I believe is your implied definition of "production". If I'm doing development at home, that system *is* production, and I *don't* want it whacked by a kernel IDE, VM et al issue - I Want A Stable Kernel.

Yes, those single/dual system at-home installations aren't super huge web server farms, but Yes, to their owner/operators, they matter - and so do their opinions.

Re:Slashdot

[HiThere]

You are right in a way. The arguments about kernels don't affect most of us, though we think it does (me, too, even though I know better).

The thing is, most of us run the kernel that our distribution provides us. Most of us wouldn't really gain much be doing otherwise (though USB 2 sounds quite interesting). And we choose our distribution based partially on how stable we want our system to be. There seems to be a kind of order that runs roughly...
Debain-stable, Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, Debian-unstable, other

This is grossly oversimplified, as stability isn't the only variable here, but the people for whom stability is more important cluster toward the left, and those with other priorities cluster toward the right.

And what we are talking about is stability of the distro, not of the kernel. The kernel is a small part. (For the more experimental people, the kernel may not even be the one supplied by the distro.)

What most people are really doing is dreaming of the fabulous "next release" when all of the unnamed marvels will be given to them. It never happens, though incremental improvements happen all the time, and there's always lots of new eye-candy.

I know this is happening, and even so it still happens to me. Watching it happen makes me feel silly, but it's fun! So I just don't take it too seriously. I'm just glad that I lust after new software more than after Ice Cream! (I already have enough troubles with that).

Just my thoughts

[young jedi]

If 2.7 begins before 2.6 is stable aren't we in danger of seeing a win9x syndrome in that bugs will live for ever and instead of being fixed they will be coded around. I fear very much the long term affects on the kernel and in turn Linux if the trees are split prior to a stabilization period. I am a developer, not on this level, but I have seen the affects of splitting a code base simply to continue developing and at the same time trying to patch existing "production code" and then port things back and forth. It is a very bad idea!! Usually what happens is things don't get back ported they are only provided doing a major upgrade, again the microsoft way of bug fixing.

Granted, you will always have some cross patching, however I think the idea of building off of a clean base is very important. For example, you would not put new tires on your car if the engine is not running, right?

Essentially, I think the issue here is one of knowing the base is clean versus drudging on in the dark despite the fact that you have been offered a lantern.

To put this most bluntly I would call this Microsoft syndrome. As I said before win9x is the perfect example of a system that was never stabilized rather it was constantly released to the unsuspecting public as upgrades which where really bug fixes and the monkeys went back to the keyboards never addressing issues raised by numerous consumer requests on the so called production release because the devel team would rather work on that new feature because it is more interesting than maintaining the existing code base.

I am being harsh here I know, but I am trying to view this in the long term. I feel that this would weaken the kernel and as I said weaken Linux which would in the end at least decrease corporate trust in the stability of Linux or at worst give M$ what it wants, Linux's death,

Maybe I am extreme, feel free to beat me but I know you have to have a clean starting point before you can move forward otherwise you will constantly be taking steps backwards which eventually leads to stagnation and death.

Just my thoughts

Re:Just my thoughts

[WetCat]

If 2.7 begins before 2.6 is stable
Heh! 2.6 should be a polished to extremely stability 2.5! Not anyhow else! So it should be as stable as possible, unless it's not worth changing from 2.5 to 2.6.
Hmm. May be a good idea to put something like
2.5pre? People will know that it's a kernel that
is going to be stable and will test it as nearly stable?

Re:Just my thoughts

[young jedi]

You maybe right, but I have never seen the first release of a major be perfect, in any software written by anyone! That is why .01, .02, and so on come out so fast right after the initial release.

Re:Just my thoughts

[Horny Smurf]

I quite an ordinary guy. No big muscles, no huge dick, not even particularly handsome, but I'm a lucky person. You know, the kind of guy that fun things always seem to happen to. I can't remember the first time I real- ized that I was lucky, but I certainly remember one night in New York City, late in the evening when I was doing a little Bar hopping, when I walked into the local bar and seated myself.

I was expecting to have a regular Friday night but the fates dealt me a new card that night. I was on my second round when a woman approached my table and asked if the extra chair had been taken. I replied that it wasn't and she proceeded to sit down.

She had suicidal blonde hair and a voluptuous body. She wore a tight miniskirt and fishnet stockings and to flatter her large breasts she wore a low cut halter top that revealed a lot of cleavage. Her eyes were the wildest shade of green I had ever seen in eyes, very light and almost florescent but not quite.

We began to talk and continued a good conversation for about an hour when the subject suddenly switched to sex. (I think that she was the one who first brought the subject up.)

We discussed our personal sexual preferences for a while and we were both getting quite horny. (You know, flirting shamelessly with each other.)

Another fifteen minutes of steamy sex talk went by when I felt her leg sweep across my foot. Thinking nothing of it I continued talking. Then I felt her leg but this time it was rubbing up and down my shin. I got an instant hard-on and pushed my leg out a bit more, so as she had plenty of room to work on it.

We continued our conversation as her leg rubbed higher and higher making its way towards my crotch area. Then her foot raised and pushed against my groin. She slid her foot up and down in a very pleasing manner. After about two minutes of this she stopped and got up.

"I'm going to freshen up." She said seductively with a wink. I guessed what she wanted me to do by the sparkle in her eyes, so after she had been gone for a couple of seconds I got up too and went off in the same direc- tion. I was in the back halls of the bar trying to find where she might be when I was pulled into a utility room. I couldn't see her but I recognized the scent of her perfume.

We where locked in each others embrace immediately like lovers who were going to die at any moment.

I slid my hand down her back, across her butt, and down her leg until I reached the bottom of her skirt. I slid my hand under and began rubbing her thighs. They were bare and I quickly discovered that she wasn't wearing any panties either.

As I was felling this bird up she was undoing my pants and sliding her hand under my boxer shorts. She rubbed my dick with those long delicate fingers I had admired before and made me so excited that I wasn't sure how much more massaging I was going to be able to stand.

I moved my hand on down until it came to the outer fringes of pubic hair, then ran my fingers through it and came to her juicy cunt. I parted her vaginal lips with my middle finger then slid it in. What a delight to feel her all lubricated for me. I love that special slickness that a horny woman has when she's ready to be fucked. It makes me crazy.

She began to move her hips up and down shoving herself on to my finger. She made noises similar to purring as she got more and more excited. Her grip on my cock tightened as she was about to orgasm.

Finally, as she came her cunt juices flowed out in barrels covering my hand and down her inner thigh. Then my pretty baby started to stroke my cock in earnest.

I slipped my fingers out of her honey pot and tried to dry them on my shirt. Before I could react my little fuck doll slid down to her knees in front of me and placed her lips on my dick. She slid her mouth over the head of it and began to bob that pretty blonde head like there was no tomorrow.

It was like an erotic torture. She managed to take my full length in one swallow gagging just a bit. I could feel the head of my dick going down her throat which was a lot like entering a pussy.

I came about a minute later after one of the best blow- jobs of my life. There was no way I could have held out any longer, she really knew what she was doing. (She must have had a lot of experience, the way she played me like a musical instrument.)

After I came she stood up in front of me. I could hear her heavy breathing and could smell my come on her breath. I could tell that she was still as stimulated as I was. So I pressed her against the wall and slowly shoved her down to the floor of the utility room. With out asking I lifted her skirt and climbed on top of her small body.

I heard her moan as I arranged my dick at her opening and I readied for the wildest fuck of my lifetime. Pushing I entered her little piece of paradise with full thrust. She screamed with pain and pleasure as my cock shoved its way home, but after a few more strokes the noises she made were those of lust.

As my dick pounded her cunt my hands found themselves fondling her firm tits. (I had torn her blouse open. I can still remember the sound of her buttons flying around the room.)

After a minute she began to get more and more excited and clamped her shapely legs around my body and started to thrust onto my cock, enabling maximum penetration. On one particularly deep thrust I felt her vaginal walls clamp around my dick like a vice. When she began to climax her back arched up off the floor and she began to make hissing noises.

I wish the lights had been on so I could have seen her face as she clawed the air. It lasted for a few seconds, then she fell back and her body relaxed under me.

I had been effected by her emotional and physical climax and came in floods myself. I emptied spurt after spurt into her until I thought if I kept doing it much longer she might explode.

After gaining the most pleasure I could from her sweaty body I withdrew my semi-hard dick from her. My white cream spilled from her used cunt as I withdrew from her. (After a couple seconds it stopped.)

"Was it good for you baby?" I asked.

"Fuck yes lover, better than I can remember ever!" She replied as she panted for air. After a brief time of silence she said, "Well I guess I should be going now." She got up.

I just kind of laid there, still out of breath as she pulled her damaged blouse closed and adjusted her skirt to cover her come soaked cunt. And a moment later she was gone.

I never did see her again, and I didn't even know her name, but I've always had a thing for suicide blondes ever since.

Re:Just my thoughts

[Fjord]

No. The same problems don't happen for many reasons. One is that because the stable and unstable version are worked on concurrently, you still have fixes done to the stable kernel. For those that want stability, use 2.(even) for those who want to make new feaures or manke an applicationt that uses new features put on a 2.(odd) (note: 2.(odd) really is just for developers. The features aren't anything that a user could want, because there aren't applications that use them yet (thus the developers using it)).

Secondly. It's important to know that when you get down to the distribution level, that there are still backports to 2.2 (possibly even 2.0, but I don't know. I use a 2.2 kernel). This is why you'll see a version like 2.2.18-23. It means it's the 2.2.18 kernel from the linux kernel guys, with 23 revisions that have backported bug fixes (the same thing applies to other packages). This is really one of the strengths of open source and shouldn't be taken lightly. It is one thing that sets linux apart from the MS line.

Re:Just my thoughts

[HiThere]

I believe that there's some confusion here.

I have heard that:
A stable version release is one that has specified interfaces that don't change during the minor version releases.

This isn't the same as a bug free release, though it does imply that a certain kind of bug has been fixed.

Bug free releases don't happen. They aren't going to happen. And nobody expects them to happen. During the development process of changing the interfaces, attempts are made to avoid introducing new bugs, and to fix the ones that are introduced. These aren't totally successful. Don't expect it.

Actually, until the interfaces have been frozen you can't really fix all the bugs. It really isn't possible even for perfect programmers. So only the really daring would even think of using 2.6.0 for anything that couldn't be reconstructed instantly. When inherrent problems are found with an interface in a major version, the only solution is to work around it until the next major version is ready. And you can't really know ahead of time. All you can do is try to get a wide variety of people to test it. And you can never get a wide enough variety of testers to give good reports. Guaranteed.

Re:Just my thoughts

[WetCat]

I agree. This is why I want to re-introduce the system of "pre-s"
2.5.xx should be the last development version,
2.5.xxPre-1 should be freezed version
2.5.xxPre-2 should be freezed version with some bug fixes
2.5.xxPre-N should be version where almost everybody agree that it's a stable version with 99.99% stability
2.6.0 will be first production stable kernel
2.6.1 will be fixing an unexpected bugs, etc.
2.7.0 will be next development kernel, introduced
when 2.5.xxPre-1 issued

Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

How about first focusing on making a decent (standard) GUI that is comparable to Windows 2000 in ease-of-use instead of having all these "window managers"?

Re:Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut the F*CK up. Try KDE, shit try GNOME both may have bugs but I can say they crash less than winblows GUI and are atleast as easy to use.

> How about first focusing on making a decent >(standard) GUI that is comparable to Windows 2000 >in ease-of-use instead of having all these "window >managers"?

Better yet where are the major software houses on providing the packages we like, roxio and the like, and when will they consider this platform as legitimate?

Just a note, Windows 2000 GUI crashes an average of 6 times every 6 hours in my experience, they just made the thing restart automagically like OS/2's did 10 years ago so that the user is none the wiser and suddenly is faked into the belief that a stable GUI makes a stable OS.

Re:Idea

[Alan_Thicke]

ummm The kernel hackers have nothing to do with creating a GUI.

Re:Idea

[young jedi]

I should not have posted anonymously. I wanted this to be publicly my statements.

Anyway, the next comment is correct. In the Linux world, and might I add the correct world(not because it is linux but because there should no real connection between the kernel and a GUI system, the GUI has absolfuckinlutely nothing to do with the kernel!!!

This guy should get a clue prior to spouting off at the mouth, especially at a place like /.

Re:Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut the F*CK up. Try KDE, shit try GNOME both may have bugs but I can say they crash less than winblows GUI and are atleast as easy to use.

I use "winblows" (real mature) XP and have not had a crash in... I can't even remember the last time.

Better yet where are the major software houses on providing the packages we like, roxio and the like, and when will they consider this platform as legitimate?

When you stop using terms like "winblows".

Re:Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comment is one of the primary reasons why Bill Gates is a billinaire and you are not

Re:Idea

[Com2Kid]

Just a note, Windows 2000 GUI crashes an average of 6 times every 6 hours in my experience,

Nice math their buddy, that is called once an hour....

Granted I had Windows 2000 core dump on me ~10-12 times yesterday (w00t) and another good 3 or 4 unexplained crashes, but that is all because I have managed to fuck up the DirectX sub layer to hell and well, err, heh;

when it IS running properly (which it will be as soon as I manage to find the install disks. ^_^ ) it has very long uptimes, though it is awfully dependent on what you are doing. After the first 3 or 4 hundred program installs/uninstalls things to tend to, err, get a bit cluttered, heh.

Then again I would like to see you do that many program installs in as short a time on a *nix box. :-D

Bah, what am I saying, dependencies suck period, no matter what OS you are on. :(

Oh, and the *nixs DO have a shitty ass GUI system, seriously, there needs to be a BIG effort to ditch X and get a real system underneath that, technology has advanced a lot in the intervening years since X came out, hell, just the pure CS theory stuff has advanced a good deal, for crying out loud, come up with a better system. Or at least a more coherent one. It has taken MS how long and how many revisions/API changes to get even a /somewhat/ understandable API running underneath things? Hell, if even MS can admit that GUI APIs are a not going to be gotten right the first time, certainly the OpenSource community can admit to the same thing and do it again until it IS gotten right. Yes it would be a lot of work, but it would be worth it. (and had somebody started back in 1999 or so it might be nearly complete by now....)

Re:Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

> Then again I would like to see you do that many program installs in as short a time on a *nix box. :-D

(You were grinning, but even so..)

On a Debian Linux box, I can *easily* cause a download & install of several hundred programs, libraries, etc by "apt-get dist-upgrade" from stable to testing, for example. No such instabilities post-upgrade.

I believe Red Hat 7.2 -> 7.3 upgrades do the same amount of work.

Agreed on sucking dependencies, though.

Re:Idea

[afidel]

With a pretty loaded and underpowered (p2-300 256MB ram running usually mozilla, IE6, some office products, management tools, java based trouble ticket system (I hate Peregrine) etc) I have had an uptime of 146 days before we moved buildings and am on day 47 since then. I don't know what kind of shitty drivers you are running but the only bsod's I have seen under 2k were all driver related.

Re:Idea

[MadFarmAnimalz]

After the first 3 or 4 hundred program installs/uninstalls things to tend to, err, get a bit cluttered, heh.

Then again I would like to see you do that many program installs in as short a time on a *nix box. :-D

So, let's see if I got this right. You install a lot of stuff, the box goes bad. And you can install a lot of stuff a lot faster in windows than in an *nix box.

Therefore, the primary attraction in Windows is that you can muck it up one HELL of a lot faster.

Efficiency, in other words.

Yep, I'm with you :-)

Re:Idea

[Com2Kid]

With a pretty loaded and underpowered (p2-300 256MB ram running usually mozilla, IE6, some office products, management tools, java based trouble ticket system (I hate Peregrine) etc) I have had an uptime of 146 days before we moved buildings and am on day 47 since then. I don't know what kind of shitty drivers you are running but the only bsod's I have seen under 2k were all driver related.


See, there is your problem;

the misc software crud part of my registery?

Over 50 thousand entries. (!!!!)

158 fonts installed (ouch); 3 language packs; 3 versions of Photoshop, 2 versions of Java (err, well 3 but only 2 that the system will admit to, uninstaller failed miserably), and if I even try and install Java into Moz bad things happen.

Well heck now if I even run moz.exe bad things happen, heh.

DirectX is like one layer BELOW the drivers, if the DirectX layer is shot ANY driver will fuck up on you. That is what is happening to me.

My WinNT directory is still a 'mere' 1.43 Gigs though, heh.

(not /that/ bad, I have had it up to 3 gigs before just with old ass DLLs and other crap lying around. :( )

I appear to be gathering ~50-60 cookies a day just browsing the internet (ouch),

and none of this is counting that NT5 apparently works /great/ in stable always on enviroments but appears to suck horribly when it gets in a situation where it is booted on and off all the time. :( (with power bills what they are, no way in heck am I leaving things on 24/7!!!)

I have seen NT5 literaly kill itself just by being rebooted, boot, shutdown, boot, shutdown, eventualy it just refuses to boot and you have to go into safe mode and start correcting crap.

Oh yah, Microsoft also decided to install the French version of the Matrox G400 Dual Head drivers some time back, hehe, I installed a more, err, appropriate verison of them, but even in Safemode I cannot remove the old version.

I also have a bunch of things called WAN Miniport drivers which I have like NO idea what they are, there are four of them installed on the system (just kinda showed up one day. . . . better then 9x where things would just disappear one day I guess though) and when I tried to remove them (any mode) it said "cannot remove this device is neccisary to start up your computer."

Disabled them though, yaah. Didn't have too much of an impact on stability one way or the other though. :(

Re:Idea

[Com2Kid]

So, let's see if I got this right. You install a lot of stuff, the box goes bad. And you can install a lot of stuff a lot faster in windows than in an *nix box.

Therefore, the primary attraction in Windows is that you can muck it up one HELL of a lot faster.

Efficiency, in other words.

Yep, I'm with you :-)

Well, thing is, I would like a setup (out of the box, I know I could just keep sequential images of my HD on a RAID array someplace on an older machine or such, but, err, that is NOT exactly eloquent. Kick ass yes, eloquent, no) where I can install all the crap I want and not have to worry about some bloated huge central depository of crap getting too big, or of the alternative, everything becoming so cross referenced and dependent that uninstalling anything becomes like a giant Jenga game.

Either pathway sucks.

DOS rocked, copied apps, ran apps, deleted apps. None of this installing or dependency bullshit. :-D (yah so darn nearly everything else about it may have sucked, but at least you could turn the computer on and know you'd get to something and be able to run something! If one app went down it didn't take nothing else with it.))

Who cares...

[josh crawley]

I really don't give a shit how they manage releases.... AS LONG AS IT WORKS.

This together that lasts for never

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey nerds!

I like it when the future and the past both happen concurrently, in the present. So let's mix in a little 2.7, and a little 2.6. But it sure would be nice if like (seemingly)ALL of the dev efforts weren't focused away from the stable branch...

Now if we could only manage to get that 2.4.19 released... It's been what, like 9 months since 2.4.18's debut...

In honour of Euler

[Anonymous Coward]

Release version 2.71828 and call it quits.

Re:In honour of Euler

[Anonymous Coward]

/* Release version 2.71828 and call it quits.*/

But then you have 2.718281
and then 2.7182818
and so on
why stop?
it takes all the charm away from irrational numbers

Re:In honour of Euler

[Liam]

You mean like metafont?

I've got mail

[Alan_Thicke]

I've got mail I've got mail




yaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!

Re:I've got mail

[Anonymous Coward]

I GOT MAIL! I GOT MAIL! I GOT MAIL!
YAY!
lameness filter is gay!
I GOT MAIL! I GOT MAIL! I GOT MAIL!
YAY!
lameness filter is gay!

You misunderstood

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got male. You've got male.

To release or not to release

[renehollan]

Look, no matter when you release 2.6, you will want to change it. So, if you never want to change it, you will never release it.

So, the best time to let 2.6 "escape" is when you're fairly confident it's "ready" and won't need patching.

Of course, you'll be wrong -- it will need patching, or backports of useful features that just didn't make it in time.

But, the idea is that these patches or backports should be trivial "oopses" where the change does not require massive code review, or the backport is clearly something that was "99% done" already.

So, my suggestion is release 2.7, and hold off on release 2.6 until the obvious release-related "oops"es are found, say 1-2 weeks, then try your best to release a 2.6 that won't need patching. It will anyway, but don't lose sleep over it.

Re:To release or not to release

[drudd]

This is nice in theory, but the problem is that most of the release-related oops's aren't found until 2.6 is released and 20x the number of people start using the newly labled "stable" kernel.

That's why Linus tried to release 2.4 when it wasn't quite ready... it wasn't improving fast enough to ever be ready...

Doug

Re:To release or not to release

[renehollan]

Your point is noted, but you can't have it both ways:

Either issue a release candidate, with the intent of catching release-related oopses;

or branch the next version, release it, and backport release-related oopses;

or try your best, release, and patch release-related oopses to the stable branch either at the same time as the unstable branch, or delay forking the unstable branch for a while.

As you note, the first two approaches don't give enough feedback. The third results in less than perfect releases. Without a release test plan in place, I don't really know how this problem can be avoided, short of getting people to test "release candidate" releases. In the old days, that's what gamma tests were for -- beta tests from an end-user perspective.

Re:I can just picture him slapping his nuts on /.

[Brownie the AssClown]

No shit. What a fucktard. But, if was Taco's scat slave, I'd be messed up too. Oh,well at least LNUX will be delisted soon, then they'll go bankrupt.

Even numbered releases HAVE to be stable!

[mojumbo]

Anyone who runs production systems expects (demands?) even-numbered releases to be stable.

There's no serious linux admin out there that wants to have to test a new supposedly "stable" kernel for a week before employing it on a bunch of mission critical boxes. Say I want/need a feature in the new release of the "stable" kernel, should i expect anything less that a kernel that is rock solid? There's people still running 2.2 series kernels because of the whole 2.4 feature creep fiasco.

All the stability issues should be worked out before a kernel is considered "stable." Seems to make sense to me...

Re:Even numbered releases HAVE to be stable!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no serious linux admin out there that wants to have to test a new supposedly "stable" kernel for a week before employing it on a bunch of mission critical boxes

There aren't many serious linux admins out there who would put any kernel on a mission critical box, if that kernel hasn't been out long enough for other people to have already found the problems.

Re:Even numbered releases HAVE to be stable!

[p-k4]

>Anyone who runs production systems expects (demands?) even-numbered releases to be stable.

That's right! If it isn't stable, you'll take your OS dollars somewhere else.

Oh, wait...

Re:Even numbered releases HAVE to be stable!

[Anonymous Coward]

> That's right! If it isn't stable, you'll take your OS dollars somewhere else.
> Oh, wait...

So, you don't think boxed copies of Red Hat, SuSE or Mandrake would count as "OS dollars"?

Not everyone installs via downloaded ISOs - businesses usually use boxed sets to get the vendor support.

Hmmm - sounds like I'm replying to a troll here.

Re:Even numbered releases HAVE to be stable!

[afidel]

Actually I demand that my vendor does sufficient and apropriate testing before releasing a kernel. I don't care what branch it comes out of so long as they will support it. Beyond my distro vendor I also need support from my major apps vendors. Rational for instance will not support a redhat kernel for 90 days after errata is posted, so it usually means we are at least one minor revision behind the bleeding edge, but it doesn't matter because redhat backports all important (read security and critical bug) fixes and supplies them to us via internal up2date processes.

Early unstable kernels are too broken anyway

[iabervon]

Unstable series often start off with versions which break everything, because whatever fundamental change is first up for the series has gone in and the drivers and so on haven't been updated. It was a long time in 2.5 before it was really sensible for people to work on it (aside from the bio work), and people were actually doing their development on 2.4 even after 2.5 had started. In part, this wasn't even an issue of stability: Linus just wasn't taking patches on other subsystems. If 2.7 starts when 2.6 comes out, and major changes go into 2.7.1, people will stay on 2.6 until the first major set of changes in 2.7 has stabilized. Provided that the first thing under development in 2.7 isn't broken in 2.6 (in which case, the people who could fix it would be working on 2.7), everyone important to fixing obscure bugs in 2.6 will still be working on 2.6, but sitting on their patches, because they can't go into 2.6 (not fixes). As the interfaces for 2.7 (where they differ from 2.6) become known, people will start using them, but, until that point, 2.6 and 2.7 are basically the same, except that you can get 2.6 running to develop on.

Re:I can just picture him slapping his nuts on /.

[Linus Turdballs]

If they go bankrupt, who will we troll? And what will we do without cmdrtaco.pl to make fun of!?!?!?! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

What's New in Security

[Anonymous Coward]

Introduction

Businesses have extended the traditional local area network (LAN) by combining intranets, extranets and Internet sites; as a result, increased system security is now more critical than ever before. To provide a secure computing environment, the Windows .NET Server operating system will provide many important new security features and improves on the security features originally included in Windows 2000 Server.

Trustworthy Computing
Viruses exist and software security is an ongoing challenge. To address these facts Microsoft has made Trustworthy Computing a key initiative for all its products. Trustworthy Computing is a framework for developing devices powered by computers and software that are as secure and trustworthy as the everyday devices and appliances you use at home. While no Trustworthy Computing platform exists today, the basic redesign of Windows .NET Server is a solid step towards making this vision a reality.

The Common Language Runtime
The Common Language Runtime (CLR) software engine is a key element of Windows .NET Server that improves reliability and helps ensure a safe computing environment. It reduces the number of bugs and security holes caused by common programming mistakes--as a result, there are fewer vulnerabilities for attackers to exploit.

CLR verifies that applications can run without error and checks for appropriate security permissions; making sure that code only performs appropriate operations. It does this by checking for things such as: where the code was downloaded or installed from; whether it has a digital signature from a trusted developer; and whether the code has been altered since it was digitally signed.
Benefits

Windows .NET Server will provide a more secure and economical platform for doing business
Benefit Description
Lower Costs This results from simplified security management processes such as access control lists and Credential Manager.
Implementation of Open Standards The IEEE 802.1X protocol makes it easy to secure wireless LANs from the threat of eavesdropping within your business environment.
Protection for Mobile Computers and other New Devices Security features such as Encrypting File System (EFS), certificate services, and automatic smart card enrollment make it easier to secure a full range of devices.

EFS is the core technology for encrypting and decrypting files stored on NTFS volumes. Only the user who encrypts a protected file can open the file and work with it. Certificate Services is the part of the core operating system that allows a business to act as its own certification authority (CA) and issue and manage digital certificates.

Automatic smart card enrollment and self-registration authority features provide enhanced security for enterprise users by adding another layer of authentication; this is in addition to simplified security processes for security conscious organizations.
To top of page
New Features and Improvements

The Windows .NET Server Family will provide the following:

* A more secure platform for doing business.
* The best platform for your public key infrastructure.
* Secure extension of your business to the Internet.

A More Secure Platform for Doing Business
Windows .NET Server will provide many new and improved features that combine to create a more secure platform for doing business.
Feature Description
Internet Connection Firewall Windows .NET Server will provide Internet security using a software-based firewall called Internet Connection Firewall (ICF). ICF provides protection to computers directly connected to the Internet, or to computers located behind an Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) host computer that is running ICF.
Secure IAS/RADIUS Server The Internet Authentication Server (IAS) is a Remote Authentication Dial-in User Server (RADIUS) that manages user authentication and authorization. It also manages connections to the network using a variety of connectivity technologies, such as dial-up, virtual private networks (VPNs), and firewalls.
Secure Wireless and Ethernet LANs Windows .NET Server enables the authentication and authorization of users and computers that connect to wireless and Ethernet LANs. This is accomplished by Windows .NET Server support of the IEEE 802.1X protocols. (IEEE 802 standards define methods for accessing and controlling LANs.)
Software Restriction Policies Windows .NET Server will let a system administrator use policy or execution enforcement to prevent executable programs from running on a computer.

For example, specific corporate-wide applications can be restricted from running unless they're executed from a particular directory. Software restriction policies can also be configured to prevent virus-infected or malicious code from running.
Security Improvements for Servers on Ethernet and Wireless LANs Windows .NET Server will provide security for both Ethernet and wireless LANs that are based on IEEE 802.11 specifications, and that support public certificates deployed using autoenrollment or smart cards.

These security improvements enable access control to Ethernet networks in public places like malls or airports. Authentication of computers within an extensible authentication protocol (EAP) operating environment is also supported.
Increased Web Server Security Information security is a critically important issue for organizations everywhere. To increase Web server security, Internet Information Services 6.0 (IIS 6.0) will be configured for maximum security right out of the box--its default installation is "locked down."

Advanced security features in IIS 6.0 include: selectable cryptographic services, advanced digest authentication, and configurable access control of processes. These are among the many new security features that enable you to conduct business securely on the Web.
Encrypting the Offline Files Database The option to encrypt the Offline Files database is now available. This is an improvement over Windows 2000 where cached files could not be encrypted.

This feature supports the encryption and decryption of the entire offline database. Administrative privileges are required to configure how offline files will be encrypted.
FIPS-compliant, Kernel-mode, Crypto Module This cryptographic module runs as a driver in kernel-mode and implements Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS)-approved cryptographic algorithms. These algorithms include: SHA-1, DES, 3DES, and an approved random number generator.

The FIPS-compliant, kernel-mode, crypto module lets governmental organizations deploy FIPS 140-1-compliant, Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) implementations using:

* L2TP (Layer Two Tunneling Protocol)/IPSec VPN client and server.
* L2TP/IPSec tunnels for gateway-to-gateway VPN connections.
* IPSec tunnels for gateway-to-gateway VPN connections.
* IPSec-encrypted, end-to-end, network traffic between client and server, and server to server.

New Digest Security Package The new digest security package supports the digest authentication protocol, along with RFC 2617 and RFC 2222. These protocols are supported by both Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) and the Active Directory® service.
System Security Improvements Important improvements have been made to ensure overall system security including:

* Increased performance improvement of over 35 percent when using the secure sockets layer (SSL).
* IIS is not installed by default. To deploy IIS, it first has to be installed using Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel. Buffer checking capability in Microsoft Visual Studio®. (Buffer overruns are commonly used by hackers to exploit a system.)

Credential Manager Credential Manager in Windows .NET Server will provide a secure store for user credentials, including passwords and X.509 certificates.

These credentials provide a consistent, single sign-on experience for users--including roaming users. A Win32® API is available that allows server- and client-based applications to obtain user credentials.
SSL Client Authentication Improvements In Windows .NET Server the SSL session cache can be shared by multiple processes. This reduces the number of times a user has to reauthenticate with applications, and reduces CPU cycles on the application server.
To top of page

The Best Platform for Your Public Key Infrastructure
Windows .NET Server will make it easier to deploy a public key infrastructure, along with associated technologies like smart cards.
Feature Description
Certificate Autoenrollment and Autorenewal These important new features dramatically reduce the amount of resources needed to manage X.509 certificates.

Windows .NET Server will make it possible to automatically enroll and deploy certificates to users--and as certificates expire, they can be automatically renewed.

Certificate autoenrollment and autorenewal make it easier to deploy smart cards faster, and improve the security of wireless (IEEE 802.1X) connections by automatically expiring and renewing certificates.
Windows Installer Digital Signature Support Digital signature support enables Windows Installer packages and external cabinets to be digitally signed. This lets IT administrators provide a more secure Windows Installer package, which is especially important if a package is sent over the Internet.
Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Improvements The certificate server included in Windows.NET Server now supports delta CRLs. A CRL makes the publication of revoked X.509 certificates more efficient, and makes it easier for a user to retrieve a new certificate.

And because you can now specify the location where a CRL will be stored, it's much easier to move it to accommodate specific business and security needs.
To top of page

Secure Extension of Your Business to the Internet
A business needs a secure way to communicate with employees, customers and partners that are not located within its intranet. Windows .NET Server will make it easier to securely extend access to your network for individuals and other businesses that need to work with data or use resources.

Feature Description
Passport Integration A Passport identity can be mapped to an Active Directory identity within Windows .NET Server. For example, by associating a Passport identity with an Active Directory identity a business partner can be authorized to access resources through IIS, rather than having to logon directly to a Windows network. Passport integration will provide an equivalent single sign-on experience using IIS.
Cross-Forest Trusts If you're working with a partner or company that has an Active Directory forest deployed, you can use Windows .NET Server to set up a cross-forest trust between their forest and yours.

This allows you to explicitly trust certain, or all, users or groups in the other forest. You also have the capability to set permissions based on user or groups that are resident in the other forest. Cross-forest trusts make it easy to conduct business with other companies using Active Directory.
To top of page
Summary

Efficient and secure networked computing is more important than ever for a business to remain competitive. Windows .NET Server will let you take advantage of your existing IT investments, and extend those advantages to your partners, customers, and suppliers by deploying key features like cross-forest trusts and Passport integration.

Windows .NET Server will provide services that create a more secure environment for doing business. It's easy to encrypt sensitive data and software restriction policies can be used to prevent damage caused by viruses and trojans. And Windows .NET Server is the best choice for deploying a public key infrastructure; its autoenrollment and autorenewal features make it easy to deploy smart cards and certificates across the enterprise.

Getting Secure and Staying Secure
Microsoft is committed to doing what's necessary to help customers get secure and stay secure. The single best thing you can do to maintain the health and security of the computers in your organization is to stay current with the latest security updates as they're made available.

Subscribe to the Microsoft Security Notification Service
This is a free e-mail notification service that provides accurate information to keep you informed about, and protected from, malicious attacks.

You can also read security bulletins and other information about Microsoft product security on http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security.

Odds

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd numbers RULE.

Make the even numbers the silly-branch of the kernel, I say. There is stability in odd numbers! You can hack down a man very easily if he is a believer in even numbers!

A pirate walks into a bar, with a ship's steering-wheel in his pants. After a few drinks, one fellow can't take it any more, and belts out to the pirate "Hey mister, you have a ship's steering-wheel in your pants!?!".

To which our pirate responds: "Aye, it's drivin' me nuts!"

Got the point?

Re:I can just picture him slapping his nuts on /.

[Brownie the AssClown]

Oh, slashdot will still be around. I am sure all the slashbots will have a pledge drive and suck enough dick to keep the site up. Tro.lls will descend on he site like a shit-hurricane.

Common Open Source Software Problem

[tlambert]

[ ...Putting on my "politically incorrect" hat... ]

It's a common Open Source Software problem: there is the last release, and there is the developement branch.

Developers would all prefer that you use the developement branch, report bugs against *that*, provide patches for the bugs against *that*, do all new work in the context of *that*.

But it's not how things work, outside of an Ivory Tower.

In the real world, people who are using the system are using it as a platform to do real work *unrelated to developement of the system itself*.

I know! Unbelieveable! Heretics! Sacreligios!

FreeBSD has this disease, and has it bad. It very seldom accepts patches against it's last release, even in the developement branch of the last release, if those patches attempt to solve problems that make the submitted work look suspiciously like "developement". The cut-off appears to be "it fixes it in -stable, but would be hard to port to -current; do it in -current, as your price of admission, and back-port it instead, even if you end up with identical code".

The only real answer is to keep the releases fairly close together -- and *end-of-life* the previous release *as soon as posible*.

The FreeBSD 4.x series has lived on well past FreeBSD 4.4 -- supposedly the last release on the 4.x line before 5.0. FreeBSD 4.6 is out, and 4.7 is in the planning stages.

It's now nearly impossible for a commercially paid developer to contribute usefully to FreeBSD, since nearly all commercially paid developers are running something based on -stable. FreeBS -current -- the 5.x developement work -- is *nearly two years* off the branch point from the 4.x -stable from which it is derived.

Linux *MUST* strive to keep the differences between "this release" and "the next release" *as small as possible*. They *MUST* not "back-port" new features from their -current branch to their -stable branch, simply because their -current branch is -*UN*stable.

Delaying the 2.6 release until the 2.7 release so that you can "stabilize" and "jam as many 2.7 features into 2.6 as possible" is a mistake.

Make the cut-off on 2.6. And then leave it alone. People who are driven by features will have to either run the developement version of 2.7, or they will simply have to wait.

Bowing to the people who want to "have their cake and eat it, too" is the biggest mistake any Open Source Software project can make.

Don't drag out 2.7, afterward, either... and that's inevitable, if everything that makes 2.7 desirable is pushed back into 2.6. Learn from the mistakes of others.

-- Terry

Re:Common Open Source Software Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

"The only real answer is to keep the releases fairly close together -- and *end-of-life* the previous release *as soon as posible*."

At the cost of stability? Oh, and I mean real stability, not nerds going "I've got 256 days uptime on my Linux box that I use to ummmmm.... wait I'm not sure what I do with it!" If Linux wants to go this way, all power to them. However, if they want to keep stability this is not the route that should be taken. Linux has floated somewhere in the middle of "cutting edge" and "stable" for a while and I am unsure of the direction that will be taken in the future.

Re:Common Open Source Software Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

feel free to put more than one sentence in a paragragh

Re:Common Open Source Software Problem

[brad-x]

And here I was about to mention the positives to mirroring FreeBSD's development model.

I think you're being terribly naive about this, particularly the It's now nearly impossible for a commercially paid developer to contribute usefully to FreeBSD comment. Development work on FreeBSD succeeds on both fronts.

Where commercial development would be done on FreeBSD, there would be as much of a shift in development process as there has been in the shift from 'regular development' to that of entire teams at IBM submitting patches to Linus. At first this seems unviable as well.

Plainly, it is concievable that were a commercial team to submit changes to -CURRENT, they would be timed for integration into -STABLE in the same manner as current changes are. And try not to make a mistake, a *lot* of things are folded back from -CURRENT on a regular basis. They may have a lengthy test period, but hey, shouldn't every new feature?

I think the Linux development community will only benefit from a move such as this. It keeps the stable kernels stable, and it folds in new changes in an orderly and well tested fashion. I'm looking forward to seeing it happen.

Re:Common Open Source Software Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think you're being terribly naive about this, particularly the It's now nearly impossible for a commercially paid developer to contribute usefully to FreeBSD comment. Development work on FreeBSD succeeds on both fronts."

I have built or contributed to 5 embedded systems products based on FreeBSD. If you count licensing the source code to third parties, that number goes up to 12. This list includes IBM, Ricoh, Deutch Telekom, Ricoh, Seagate, ClickArray, and NTT, among other lessers.

There has been no case where any of these projects have involved use of FreeBSD-current. It just does not happen: the intent of the commercial is to work on the product itself, not on the platform on which the product is intended to run. Toward that end, every one of these projects has used a stabilized snapshot of FreeBSD, usually a release, and, on only two occasions, a -security (release plus security bug fixes) or -stable (release plus any bug fixes) branch. Under no circumstances has the employer *paid* me to work on -current on their time.

There are notable exceptions to this practice, where there have been specific DARPA grants, or Yahoo has a number of highly placed people who get to pick what they work on; these opportunities are few and far between.

"Plainly, it is concievable that were a commercial team to submit changes to -CURRENT, they would be timed for integration into -STABLE in the same manner as current changes are. And try not to make a mistake, a *lot* of things are folded back from -CURRENT on a regular basis. They may have a lengthy test period, but hey, shouldn't every new feature?"

Your argument is that FreeBSD -current and FreeBSD -stable bear a strong relationship to each other, besides each having the prefix "FreeBSD", and that integration into -current means that testing will be done, and that after testing, integration into -stable will happen.

I disagree strongly. The two source bases run different tool chains, and they are significantly different, under the hood, as well. It is nearly impossible to write kernel code that operates identically, without substantial modification, on both -stable and -current. The differences in process vs. thread context, and locking *alone* mean that there is not one subsystem in the kernel that has not be touched. This ignores the semantics and API changes, etc., on top of that.

Despite back-porting, there is nearly two years difference between -stable and -current. I have a system that I updated to -current in October of 2000. It claims to be 5.0. FreeBSD has not made a code cut off the HEAD branch in that entire time -- or FreeBSD 5.0 would have been its name.

It would be a serious mistake for Linux to follow FreeBSD down this path. Linux should continue to make release code cuts off their HEAD branch, stabilize, *and then deprecating* the releases.

FreeBSD has failed to deprecate its branches, following releases. This means that if a commercial developer wants to contribute code for inclusion in future version of FreeBSD in order to avoid local maintenance (FreeBSD, unlike Linux, does not *require* such contributions, it relies on this and other emergent properties), they must firsty take their code from where it's running, and port it to an entirely *alien* environment. Then they must wait for approval, and then back-port it, since no one is going to do the work for them, to the version after the one that they stabilized on for their product.

"It keeps the stable kernels stable, and it folds in new changes in an orderly and well tested fashion."

`Orderly' and `tested' are one thing. Two *years* of API and interface evolution are something else entirely.

The first time Linux cuts a distribution that isn't a pure maintenance point release of a minor number (e.g. NOT 2.5.1 off 2.5, and NEVER 2.6 off of 2.5, if a 3.0 is in the works), it will have effectively forked itself.

-- Terry

Re:Common Open Source Software Problem

[tlambert]

[ Dammit, I hate people who use cookies instead of hidden fields for forms ]

"I think you're being terribly naive about this, particularly the It's now nearly impossible for a commercially paid developer to contribute usefully to FreeBSD comment. Development work on FreeBSD succeeds on both fronts."

I have built or contributed to 5 embedded systems products based on FreeBSD. If you count licensing the source code to third parties, that number goes up to 12. This list includes IBM, Ricoh, Deutch Telekom, Ricoh, Seagate, ClickArray, and NTT, among other lessers.

There has been no case where any of these projects have involved use of FreeBSD-current. It just does not happen: the intent of the commercial is to work on the product itself, not on the platform on which the product is intended to run. Toward that end, every one of these projects has used a stabilized snapshot of FreeBSD, usually a release, and, on only two occasions, a -security (release plus security bug fixes) or -stable (release plus any bug fixes) branch. Under no circumstances has the employer *paid* me to work on -current on their time.

There are notable exceptions to this practice, where there have been specific DARPA grants, or Yahoo has a number of highly placed people who get to pick what they work on; these opportunities are few and far between.

"Plainly, it is concievable that were a commercial team to submit changes to -CURRENT, they would be timed for integration into -STABLE in the same manner as current changes are. And try not to make a mistake, a *lot* of things are folded back from -CURRENT on a regular basis. They may have a lengthy test period, but hey, shouldn't every new feature?"

Your argument is that FreeBSD -current and FreeBSD -stable bear a strong relationship to each other, besides each having the prefix "FreeBSD", and that integration into -current means that testing will be done, and that after testing, integration into -stable will happen.

I disagree strongly. The two source bases run different tool chains, and they are significantly different, under the hood, as well. It is nearly impossible to write kernel code that operates identically, without substantial modification, on both -stable and -current. The differences in process vs. thread context, and locking *alone* mean that there is not one subsystem in the kernel that has not be touched. This ignores the semantics and API changes, etc., on top of that.

Despite back-porting, there is nearly two years difference between -stable and -current. I have a system that I updated to -current in October of 2000. It claims to be 5.0. FreeBSD has not made a code cut off the HEAD branch in that entire time -- or FreeBSD 5.0 would have been its name.

It would be a serious mistake for Linux to follow FreeBSD down this path. Linux should continue to make release code cuts off their HEAD branch, stabilize, *and then deprecating* the releases.

FreeBSD has failed to deprecate its branches, following releases. This means that if a commercial developer wants to contribute code for inclusion in future version of FreeBSD in order to avoid local maintenance (FreeBSD, unlike Linux, does not *require* such contributions, it relies on this and other emergent properties), they must first take their code from where it's running, and port it to an entirely *alien* environment. Then they must wait for approval, and then back-port it, since no one is going to do the work for them, to the minor version after the one that they stabilized on for their product.

"It keeps the stable kernels stable, and it folds in new changes in an orderly and well tested fashion."

`Orderly' and `tested' are one thing. Two *years* of API and interface evolution are something else entirely.

The first time Linux cuts a distribution that isn't a pure maintenance point release of a minor number (e.g. NOT 2.5.1 off 2.5, and NO 2.6 off of 2.5 if a 3.0 is in the works), it will have effectively forked itself.

-- Terry

Re:Common Open Source Software Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Very interesting.

I beleive that the FBSD problem is that they tried to do to much for 5.0

4.4, 4.5, 4.6, etc were not really planned. But what could they do ? Release 5.0 18 month ago ?

And I beleive that they tried to do too much in 5.0 because people don't like to maintain code. They just think they could do better, and ends up with long painful rewrites.

I think fbsd should do 'themed' short releases. Like 4 months cycle, centered on different areas of funtionality. But I must confess that what is
tried with 5.0 is huge.

Re:Common Open Source Software Problem

[brad-x]

on only two occasions, a -security (release plus security bug fixes) or -stable (release plus any bug fixes) branch.

-STABLE is release plus feature additions.

FreeBSD would certainly have to change its development model to appeal to the current tides facing Linux. It has perhaps been protected to date by the fact that the project hasn't tried to appeal to outside influence, and has become unattractive in some development situations because of this.

I think we come to an agreement on the fact that due to the nature of development done on the Linux kernel, stable and testing would have to remain very compatible and very close to each other in the pipeline.

Whether this is an appropriate move for FreeBSD is a topic for another slashdot article. :P

It's a catch-22

[Chris Pimlott]

Kernels don't get truly stable until you get thousands of people using them, but all those thousands of people aren't going to install a kernel until it's deemed a stable release.

Release candidate kernels help alleviate this somewhat, but you can never really duplicate what happens when the bulk of normal users stand using it on an everyday basis.

Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

...skip both and go straight to 3.0! Oh wait, let's make it 4.0...few months longer and we could have 5.0...

Maybe you should look at it this way

[daserver]

If you after 2.6 emidietly start working on 2.7 then maybe you didn't do a good enough job with 2.5.

Re:I can just picture him slapping his nuts on /.

[Linus Turdballs]

Slashdot will be sold to Microsoft, and the user database to Doubleclick. Millions of geeks will descend on Redmond and tear Gates to shreds, then whoever runs Doubleclick.

Branched development - more testers

[BlowCat]

What if we take another approach? When stable kernels were released in the past, they were not tested enough to be called stable. Hordes of new users would find hundreds of bugs, and the developers had to fix them instead of doing new development.

Would starting the new development branch immediately after the stable release help? Hardly. It's the time when a lot of work has to be done on the stable branch.

But what if we make sure that the stable kernel is indeed stable when it's released, not after the "stabilization"? The only solution to make kernel stable is to test it a lot before it's released.

I don't think we should be afraid of "debian syndrome". Kernel is much more monolithic than a disribution, and if e.g. IDE doesn't work well, it takes much more efforts to downgrade it safely compared to downgrading e.g. Mozilla.

The fundamental problem with the development branch is that issues with one part of the kernel affect all developers and testers. If I e.g. want to test ACPI and know how to fix it, but I don't know how to fix IDE, I won't test the latest 2.5 kernel.

I believe that the best solution would be to have branches for different subsystems. IDE changes would be merged to the trunk only when they are stable enough for other developers. It's important that the development on the branches is done openly, step by step, so that an interested developer could find the exact place where a bug was introduced. But this style of development doesn't require doing everything in the trunk. In fact, to keep the kernel relatively stable the development should be done on specialized branches.

More stable development kernel would mean more testers. More testers would mean stable release, which is truly stable, at least compared to 2.2.0 and 2.4.0. And that would eliminate the need to force developers on stabilizing the branch that is supposed to be stable form the beginning.

what is the "enter beast"?

[cpeterso]

4. The enter beast was so unyeilding, it was known that the only one person who ever understood it, had to keep a journal just to keep track of the beast (Seriously). This was one of the major reasons that ticked off Linus and I believe the reason why he pushed the new VM.

what is the "enter beast"?

funny part

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny part is that FreeBSD figured this out 10 years ago.

My $0.02...

[Zinho]

Couldn't the problem be solved by brancing the unstable first, then releasing the stable branch when it's ready?

For example, let's say that we're happy with the feature set in the 2.5 unstable series. Instead of putting off waiting for all of the bugs to get shaken out and call it 2.6, just switch from 2.5 to 2.7 on the unstable development side. Linus can pass the reins off to someone he trusts, we can have a GROF (Get Rid Of the Fin) party and his trusted lieutenant can finish stabilizing 2.5 into 2.6 without him.

This solves the problem of wanting to keep back-porting features from 2.7 into 2.6, it allows for time to make sure the 2.5 code is stable before public release as 2.6, and provides a clear feature-freeze mechanism: once Linus is gone, go bugfixes only. If you want the new features, run the unstable kernel or wait for 2.8 (released sometime after 2.9 is branched).

Not that my opinion matters at all, it's just an idea.

Re:My $0.02...

[johnnyb]

I agree. I've been saying this in public forums for years, and hopefully this idea (which is standard in almost every successfuly development house) will get adopted in Linux.

Re:My $0.02...

[Papineau]

For example, let's say that we're happy with the feature set in the 2.5 unstable series. Instead of putting off waiting for all of the bugs to get shaken out and call it 2.6, just switch from 2.5 to 2.7 on the unstable development side. Linus can pass the reins off to someone he trusts, we can have a GROF (Get Rid Of the Fin) party and his trusted lieutenant can finish stabilizing 2.5 into 2.6 without him.

The thing is, what needs to be done on the future 2.6 branch to stabilize it would also benefit 2.7. So the point of the current development model is to keep only one branch until it's really stable, then create the next development kernel branch on something which is sane. As a bonus you don't do the same work twice (stabilize the two branches for the same issues).

Now, if Linus is not the one you want in charge of this, he could always back-out of the last stabilizing efforts (IIRC, he doesn't particularly appreciate that part of development).

Branching before having a stable release would only cause both branches to diverge too much (especially in terms of bug fixes and drivers). And if you never have a "stable" development branch, it's kinda difficult to develop effectively on it. For example, see the current IDE situation in 2.5. To really develop on 2.5 atm, you need a SCSI machine because IDE seems too broken. Of course it will stabilize for 2.6, but if 2.7 is branched now, and then IDE is stabilized in 2.6, 2.7 won't necessarily have all the fixes (or some fixes won't make it to 2.6), if only because of communication problems.

So I think they'd better to work on 2.5 for now (obviously), then get into feature freeze, stabilize, release 2.6, wait a couple minor releases for it to be really stable (as in you'd be confortable using it on low-criticality (sp?) production machines after enough testing), and then start 2.7. Then 2.7 will start in a "known good" state.

openbsd, article topic

[StandardDeviant]

OK, so as background, I just woke up ~ 5 minutes ago, so the coffee isn't finished brewing, much less finding it's way into my body yet... I read the headline and the first thing that came to mind was "What? OpenBSD 2.6/2.7? I manage those releases by keeping them neatly stacked in my pile-o'-unixen under 2.8 and 2.9..." Then my brain assimilated the fat little bird under the topic, some gears churned, a little smoke came out, and I realized we were talking about Linux... ;-) The moral of this story I think is don't read slashdot right after you've woken up...

Either way is wrong

[IkeTo]

Okay, what stable is, really? What does it mean to release 2.6.0?

To me, 2.6.0 means "okay, this is what we can possibly get if only developers are running the code. We have tested our kernel, we have high confidence that it will work for you, but, you know, there are surprises. So do try it out, if you can. We promise that if you find problems and tell us, we will put you to the highest priority, so that you don't have to fall back to 2.4.XX."

What is 2.7.0? People says that it means "okay, now we have 2.6.Y stable, we can pretty much ignore it. Let's put it in the hand of Xyz Abc, the new maintainer of 2.6 series, and new work will be placed at 2.7.ZZ". But I don't like this view. This ignores the possibility that new thing can land directly into 2.6.XX. This happened quite frequently in 2.4.XX, actually, and it does work.

I believe the real reason for 2.7.XX is that "after some use, we find that 2.6.XX has the following stupid problems. It can also be improved if we don't do things this way, but instead do things that way. But they are so fundamental to 2.6.XX, that if we ever change it, we can no longer make the claim that we made when we roll out 2.6.0. These things really needs to be done, though, but we prefer people not to use it yet, and we developers will try to make things work again after they break, and after every developers can reasonably make the claim we made when we delivered 2.6.0, we will roll out 2.8.0, when every of you can try this new neat way of doing things. Currently, please stick with what we have in 2.6.XX."

If that reasoning can stand, then what 2.7 is for is really new API. A new one that can cause everything else to break. I'd say, once we know what new API we want to create, we should create 2.7.0, *regardless* of whether 2.6.XX is stable enough or not. It is absurd to be afraid that stablization of 2.6.XX will slow down because of the existence of 2.7.YY: preference is always given to 2.6.XX if things go wrong there. The real problem to release 2.7.0 too early is that many things get implemented too quickly, when most of the API changes are still up in the air, forcing most things to be written again, perhaps for many times. When that "up-in-the-air" problem goes away (or has settled to a point that we want to write and see what will happen if we really do things in the new way), there is no excuse not to release 2.7.0. Further delay only makes sure that the next kernel will arrive late again.

How about they use some bug tracking system first

[Nicolas MONNET]

Slightly offtopic:

It's really frustrating not to have a Linux kernel bug tracking system available. Searching through the huge lkml mailing list just doesn't cut it. And some questions pop back up every month, with no sign of it ever being addressed.

Example: the Athlon/VIA chipset freeze bug. Is it a chipset bug? A bios bug? A kernel bug? Is it fixed? Is it AMD's fault? Is it VIA's? Is it Linus's? Is it a PCI latency problem? An IDE problem?

Who the fuck knows!

+5 interesting

[Joe Enduser]

Come on, this is Slashdot! We don't want discussions about managing open source software projects, geesh...

joe.

ps. not a flamebait, but genuinly funny.

Re:What are the proposed new features in 2.5 and 2

[crsm]

The linux kernel,. besides stability .. what sort of things do they want top add/improve?

There is a list of the new features in 2.5 here.

In summary:

Performance

• Major rewrite of the disk IO layer meaning better harddisk performance for Joe-user and high-end database servers as well
• New and faster scheduler
• Pre-empt scheduling for better interactive performance

Features

• ALSA sound infrastructure
• Video for Linux redesign
• ACPI interface and other power-control patches. Especially a new software suspend-to-disk feature that does not involve Windows specific BIOS magic.
• Lots of high-end features (High memory, 64 bit processor support, per-CPU infrastructure, hot-swap CPU etc.etc.)
• JFS - Journaling filesystem from IBM (where's XFS?)
• Bluetooth
• USB-2.0

Security

• Access Control Lists (ACL) which gives fine-grained security
• Per-process namespaces (some Al Viro hackery. Someone please tell that man to slow down a bit)
• Plugable quota system

And as usual a lot of new driver updates.

Suspiciously missing are any memory management patches (although Rik has his reversed mapping patch in the pipe). Perhaps the topic is still a litte too hot... ;-)

The most important thing for me would be resource management features .. such as being able to allocate how much CPU, memory, or disk space a particular user or process can use. These are things that solaris has had for a long time .. and it seems that linux kernel developers arent interested in adding those features .. how can linux hope to take over the enterprise server market without it?

I think that the with the current kernel you can already do much of this. But some of the new features of the 2.5 kernel allows for much more fine-grained control - like binding a process to a distinct CPU, better quota accounting etc. Perhaps thats what you're looking for ?

The direction of the 2.5 kernel seems to me to be mainly (but not exclusively) targetting enterprise systems.

mozilla

[daesotho]

1) CVS (or Subversion)
2) Tinderbox
3) Bugzilla

Maybe others as well. Mozilla has a good development procedure IMHO.

What about Gentoo?

[mabhatter654]

This is an honest problem with Linux credibility. The way I see it Linux needs to get on a serious business/seasonal calander. They need to provide 1 ultra-stable release per year and 1 continuous development release per year. Also provide a compatibility suite for each level of the OS. One for the Kernel, one for X11, one for KDE/Gnome,and one for apps. These would be key programs that all sub versions of the stable even-numbered release must be able to run! The best desired system would be a Gentoo style system merged with cvs controls, bug reporting, and problem handling forums that additionally could be used by developers to concurently get the latest code and stamp out bugs faster before actual release. Linux will only grow by leveraging the real power of the internet of mass concurrency of code and extend to automated forums and distributions that take care of themselves without user intervention.

ALL HAIL THE GLORIOUS PIRATE JOKE

[OdinHuntr]

Also, dammit, now you've got me wondering what the insult was in Monkey Island whose retort was something like 'get the POINT?'

Burning karma for Jesus.

Re:ALL HAIL THE GLORIOUS PIRATE JOKE

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, dammit, now you've got me wondering what the insult was in Monkey Island whose retort was something like 'get the POINT?'

I've got a long, sharp lesson for you to learn today.

And I've got a little tip for you - get the point?

--

Anonymous Cowards fight like dairy farmers

Been fixed long time ago

[damas]

Somewhere between 2.4.12 and 2.4.16 (i believe that it was : mempages should be 4k long or AGP goes bust -- and the rest goes down hard and fast)