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2.4, The Kernel and Forking

Posted by Hemos on from the not-as-such-but-fun-discussions dept.

darthcamaro writes "We all assume that the kernel is the kernel that is maintained by kernel.org and that Linux won't fork the way UNIX did..right? There's a great story at internetnews.com about the SuSe CTO taking issue with Red Hat backporting features of the 2.6 Kernel into its own version of the 2.4 kernel. "I think it's a mistake, I think it's a big mistake," he said. "It's a big mistake because of one reason, this work is not going to be supported by the open source community because it's not interesting anymore because everyone else is working on 2.6." My read on this is a thinly veiled attack on Red Hat for 'forking' the kernel. The article also give a bit of background on SuSe's recent decision to GPL their setup tool YAST, which they hope other distros will adopt too."

6 of 384 comments (clear)

  1. RedHat's kernels = more like dev kernels by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    before 2.6 existed, their 2.4.x kernels looked WAY more like 2.5.x kernels. I always thought this was dangerous, as what they were effectively doing was dressing up "alpha" 2.5.x code as "stable" 2.4.x code and letting it run riot on people's production servers.

  2. Re:Red Hat?` by buro9 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Yes, as their Red Hat Enterprise product (which uses their custom 2.4 kernel) is widely deployed at hosting companies such as The Planet.

    If datacentres and hosting companies are deploying this widely, then you can be sure that there are many sysadmins out there who are creeping up the learning curve and are unaware of precisely what they run on or what it means (2.6 kernel performance with MySql should prompt many to upgrade, but it doesn't).

    So the 2.4 kernel is far more widely deployed than you may initially suspect. This is where Red Hat are making their money and why it matters to use.

  3. The fear by Effugas · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The fear is that a version of Oracle will come out that depends on 2.6-ish kernel features but doesn't actually work on 2.6 proper (i.e. it has dependencies on 2.4-era semantics). At that point, the only way to run Oracle -- no matter your toolchain -- is to use the Redhat kernel.

    --Dan

  4. USB by CaptainZapp · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Wasn't it the friendly folks at SuSE that implemented a backport for USB from 2.3. to 2.2 at the time (and some USB devices really did work)?

    Was that different or are they the most recent victims of marketing doublespeak?

    --
    ich bin der musikant

    mit taschenrechner in der hand

    kraftwerk

  5. Customers refuse to run Red Hat's kernel by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I have a large customer who refuses to run Red Hat's kernel even when they run Red Hat's distribution. And it's just for the reason that SuSE talks about. The kernel is so far diverged from the main thread of Linux that it's a dead-end, and there's no hope of getting it supported from anyone but Red Hat.I don't know if they meant it as a lock-in play, but it works out that way. And my customer doesn't have patience for Red Hat's support.

    If you have a problem and you bring it to the kernel hacker who made the subsystem you're using, it's really very difficult for them to support Red Hat's thread. Generally they just say to look to the vanilla 2.6 kernel.

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  6. Re:Yesterday's news? by ivan256 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    LinuxPPC is merged back in periodically too. Hence the reason that forks of Linux don't have the effect forks of Unix did. They're not all hiding their work from each other, and they're all allowed and willing to take the good from another fork and incorporate it into their own trees. Even if they don't, users are free to if they wish. Forking can be healthy in a free software environment.