Linux Kernel 3.0?

An anonymous reader writes "A discussion on the Linux kernel mailing list between Linux creator Linus Torvalds, Linux guru Ingo Molnar, and a few others debated the name of the upcoming stable kernel release. The choices: 2.6 or 3.0. Evidently there's been enough improvements, most notably the VM, that they're leaning towards calling it 3.0..."

Comments

Comments by Linus

[Anonymous Coward]

On Sat, 28 Sep 2002, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > i consider the VM and IO improvements one of the most important things
> that happened in the past 5 years - and it's definitely something that
> users will notice. Finally we have a top-notch VM and IO subsystem (in
> addition to the already world-class networking subsystem) giving
> significant improvements both on the desktop and the server - the jump
> from 2.4 to 2.5 is much larger than from eg. 2.0 to 2.4.

Hey, _if_ people actually are universally happy with the VM in the current
2.5.x tree, I'll happily call the dang thing 5.0 or whatever (just
kidding, but yeah, that would be a good enough reason to bump the major
number).

However, I'll believe that when I see it. Usually people don't complain
during a development kernel, because they think they shouldn't, and then
when it becomes stable (ie when the version number changes) they are
surprised that the behabviour didn't magically improve, and _then_ we get
tons of complaints about how bad the VM is under their load.

Am I hapyy with current 2.5.x? Sure. Are others? Apparently. But does
that mean that we have a top-notch VM and we should bump the major number?
I wish.

The block IO cleanups are important, and that was the major thing _I_
personally wanted from the 2.5.x tree when it was opened. I agree with you
there. But I don't think they are major-number-material.

Anyway, people who are having VM trouble with the current 2.5.x series,
please _complain_, and tell what your workload is. Don't sit silent and
make us think we're good to go.. And if Ingo is right, I'll do the 3.0.x
thing.

Linus

Re:Mirror?

[octalc0de]

I can't seem to post anonymous anymore, to prevent karma whore. P'haps it's my BAD karma resulting from one post.

Google Archive of the threads

Re:Mirror?

[octalc0de]

oopsies, Thread 2

Re:This is the biggest problem with Linux

[nr]

Uh, Windows started at version 1.0, I have run 1.0 on an old IBM XT machine. there are also Windows 3.10 which was relesed before 3.11

Re:Testing 2.5

[Webmonger]

The 'testing' time frame-- probably the closest thing to that is the planned Oct 31 feature freeze. After that, the focus should be on getting it into a releaseable state.

Re:Make 2.6.3 usable, never install a dot-oh versi

[msaavedra]

Wouldn't it be great if 2.6.1 was as robust as 2.2, or 2.4.17, at the beginning?

Things just don't work like this. It's difficult to say before a release whether it will be extremely robust. The only way to test stability is to get a whole lot of people to pound on the kernel and find stability problems. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen until Linus declares that the kernel is stable. But he's really just saying "As far as I can tell, the kernel is stable."

Anyway, not everyone had results as good as you with the 2.2 kernels. In fact, you may recall that 2.2.0 wasn't stable at all; 2.2.1 was release shortly thereafter to fix a major bug. When I switched from 2.0 to 2.2, I had plenty of stability problems, mostly due to buggy drivers. Things gradually improved through the 2.2 releases, until I finally stopped having problems around 2.2.14. From looking at LKML archives, I suspect this is the norm, rather than the exception.

In fact, I would say that linux kernel development has the following general pattern:

1. Linus maintains an unstable branch, and developers add new features, make big changes in the code, etc.
2. Linus declares a feature freeze, and developers fix bugs until things seem to work well.
3. Linus declares a stable release, and a huge number of people begin using the new kernel. All the new users expose a bunch more bugs, and the developers work to fix them.
4. The kernel becomes stable in fact rather than just in version number, and Linus gives up maintainership to someone else. He then opens another unstable branch, and the whole cycle begins again

Re:About the "new driver model"

[captaineo]

No, as long as Linus is in charge there will never be binary compatibility of modules between minor kernel versions (or even different configurations of a single version, e.g. UP or SMP). Linus considers it too much trouble to be worth the effort.

AFAIK the new driver model basically puts all drivers in a uniform structure, primarily for the purposes of handling power management (sleep states) uniformly, and of moving towards a simple, standardized layout for /proc interfaces. There has been some talk about revising the module loading/unloading process (since the current methods still have some problems), but no action has been taken yet.

Re:Hm

[Doctor Faustus]

If the distributions are the Linux Kernel + GNU Utilities shouldn't it be called Linux/GNU?

Actually, no. I think this is the same philosophy as TCP/IP, which everyone just pronounces as "Tee See Pee Eye Pee", but really means TCP over IP (as IP is a lower level protocol, and TCP runs on top of it). By the same token, GNU/Linux would be GNU over (or on) Linux.

The way RMS says it, though, it sounds like he's trying to take credit for Linux. If he asked people to call the systems "GNU on Linux", it would come off as a lot more reasonable.

Re:uhhh...

[bluephone]

Actually, Netscape 5.0 was stillborn. Back in March 1998 when Commuuncator was Open Sourced under the original NPL, what was released was not the source to the Communcator 4.x series, but the Netscape owned portions to the 5.x tree (they had to pull some parts containing IP they licensed from other companies, but could not legally redistribute). This was the codebase worked on until October of 1998 when everything but the new layout engine (NGLayout [Next Generation Layout], now Gecko) in favor of what is now the entire Mozilla Codebase. When this happened, the old source bacame MozClassic, and is considered the dead 5.0 tree, never finished, RIP. Interestingly, this is why Gecko still sports the 5.0 version number in teh UserAgent string... Netscape decided to call the new client "Netscape 6.0" for two reasons: Netscape 5.0 had come and gone, ,DOA, and IE was already at 5.5 and close to 6.0, and they wanted to keep the version number close for marketing reasons.

Now, before you bash NS's marketing for this, remember the progression of IE was 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0 in less than a year, with 1.0 barely ever getting distributed. Plus rememeber Office apps. Access went 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, skipped 4, 5, and 6 to go to 7.0 in Office 95. At least Netscape has a valid reason for skipping 5.0 :)