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No 2.7 Linux Kernel Branch Due Soon
An anonymous reader writes "At the fourth annual Linux Kernel Developers Summit, it was decided that there won't be a 2.7 Linux kernel development branch any time soon. Instead, Linux creator Linus Torvalds and the official 2.6 maintainer Andrew Morton have decided to continue working as a team, further enhancing the 2.6 kernel. Up to this point, kernels ending in an odd number (2.1, 2.3, 2.5, etc) were considered development kernels, and kernels ending in an even number (2.2, 2.4, 2.6, etc) were considered stable kernels. However, according to this KernelTrap article, active development will now continue in the mainline 2.6 tree, and the final stabilization will be left up to the companies that provide Linux distributions."
Well, i guess that's what is was like with 2.4, unofficially.
This is bad. Not all distribution maintainers have armies of patch people. This will push people to one of a few distributions such as RedHat or Suse. Espcially if 2.6 becomes an unstable piece of crap.
we get stories for every kernel realease as it is, and now we get stories when there's *not* gonna be a kernel release?
what's next? a story on microsoft *not* putting out a new version of windows?...oh, wait...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
Nothing like doing development on a production machine! I love the smell of flaky kernels in the morning.
IMHO this will just increase the fragmentation between the vendor kernels. There should really be one, and only one stable kernel used by all the vendors. We have enough problems with binary compatibility in Linux already.
The 2.6 linux kernel has been a roller coaster ride of development, and it was obvious from the switch from 2.5->2.6 that the kernel was far from ready for prime time.
So, now we're stuck with a rapidly developing 2.6 kernel that poses a lot of risks for anyone wishing to adopt the new so-percieved "stable" kernel into an OS/Embedded/Other product.
In a way, this is just an acknowledgement that things went a bit too fast with 2.6, and that waiting to release it -after- some pretty solid core feature freezes would have been good.
There is still a lot of development and teething going on, and it's going to be a real pain on the part of "third party distributors" to find and use whatever build-of-the-week is more stable than another in a given sub-branch of the 2.6 kernel.
Oh well, so much for having a nice stable 2.6 base to build new functionality into.
"Don't worry about the problems you have in mathematics, I assure you mine are much greater." - Einstein c.1919
So what exactly does this mean for distributions such as Slackware wich ship a vanilla kernel? Personally I always preferred having it "as it was meant to be" without any tweaking of the distributor.
The latest Fedora Core 2 debacle proves that this can lead to trouble (NVidia Binaries broken, etc.).
Distributions such as SLKX (wich ships a vanilla 2.4.22) didnt include the 2.6 series as the defaultkernel. My guess is Patrick didnt trust the beast yet. So what is a man like Pat to do if there isnt the manpower or will to patch the kernel but the "stable" branch cant be trusted anymore, too?
As "final stabilization will be left up to the companies that provide Linux distributions." does this not introduce the risk that the final versions will begin to diverge and over time a RedHat OS, a SuSe OS etc will emerge? Will we have a VHS vs Betamax style battle in Linux?
You don't need a lab to make mud.
Distros will pick a 2.6 release.
Say, 2.6.6.
Then they'll backport security fixes just like they did for 2.4.
The difference is nothing.
Am I the only one that thinks this new dev model is a really bad idea?? Stability is the hallmark of Linux, but that is now effectively broken. If we have a problem, we can't say anymore "oh! There's a new kernel! We should try that!" There's NOTHING wrong with the current odd-test/even-stable scheme. If Linus and Morton want to play around with new features, MAKE A 2.7 BRANCH! 2.6 is finalized, let it be! If you don't think that there's enough features in it, YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE RELEASED IT!
A lot of people use the vanilla sources, myself included obviously, I should have to go RedHat to get a working kernel. The 2.6 branch is NOT a playground, that's what the -mm branch is for.....
2.6.6 works for me, and I'm not changing. For the first time in my life, I *DON'T* trust what's coming from Linus & Co.... and that's scary.... It's like God is forsaking you to go play with some toys....
Buses stop at a bus station
Trains stop at a train station
On my desk there's a workstation....
Unfortunately according to the article, that's not true.... 2.6-mm is bleeding edge, 2.6 is development/testing and 2.6.redhat or whatever is stable.....
Buses stop at a bus station
Trains stop at a train station
On my desk there's a workstation....
We can no longer count on the bare kernels to have any stability and depend on companies to stabilize the kernel.
I disagree with this method for a few reasons.
Everyone still probably remembers when you had to use a bare kernel to recompile and get Nvidia HW Accel drivers to work with the 4k stack problem.
Also this will pose a problem with many distro's that do not have armies of people to sit around and stabilize the kernel for their distro.
Another problem is with drivers being fixed. A bare kernel will be fixed but the customer may have to wait 2-3 months before their specific distro comes up and included a fixed kernel.
Lastly this will increase costs for developers of distros such as Redhat and Novell due to them having to now employ kernel hackers to deal with problems that may exist in the Kernel.
I can see no good coming from this approach to Linux and may hurt us in the long run. I hope they reconsider.
However, according to this KernelTrap article, active development will now continue in the mainline 2.6 tree, and the final stabilization will be left up to the companies that provide Linux distributions.
No sane person will now touch 2.6 tree for a production server knowing that developement is the 2.6 tree, unless they buy from RedHat etc who may guarrantee stability
Lets hope they reconsider and create 2.7 ASAP otherwise I know some companies will probably want to either stay at current release, or abandon Linux ({cough} some may even go back to Micro$oft)
Even "production" kernels can have problems. Remember the VM changes around 2.4.10?
New productions kernels deserve every developer's full attention until they're really really ready.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
To everyone saying this will kill the independent distro, chill.
If you were going to make a new distro right now, in my opinion you'd be better off starting with Fedora or Progeny's Componetized Linux or vanilla Debian or something as it is, stand on some shoulders people. Linus and his crew produce a kernel, not an operating system, I'm sure they're doing this to produce the best kernel they can, not because they hate you.
Like other people said, 2.4 had so many changes go in during it's "stable" life, maybe their just trying to be realistic and make 2.6 actually be more stable than 2.4 this way?
I don't believe 2.7 will ever happen. In a move guaranteed to improve the acceptance of Linux by CEOs and PHBs, it will surely be...
Linux 3000 Xtreme Professional Plus (codename: BiggerHorn) - based on NT (New Tux) technology.
I'm a Slakware man myself, but I don't like sitting around waiting for Patrick to make a new kernel. I like to update my kernel myself from the official Linus tarball as and when required. This will no longer be possible.
Stick Men
It seems to me that everyone is assuming that there will never be a 2.7 tree. From the article, the simply quote Jonathan Corbet as saying that "2.7 will only be created when it becomes clear that there are sufficient patches which are truly disruptive enough to require it. When 2.7 *is* created, it could be highly experimental, and may turn out to be a throwaway tree."
They are just concentrating on the stable branch for now, and collecting a patch set (Andrew Morton's -mm patch set, that is) as a testing ground for proposed (stable) kernel changes.
This really doesn't seem like a big deal, and it implies that the kernel people will focusing on stability for the time being.
Maybe they should call the current 2.6.x series -RELEASE, and then when 2.7.x starts, call it -STABLE as it goes into maintenence mode.
Having the 3 forms like FreeBSD does: -CURRENT, -RELEASE, and -STABLE, is a good model, IMO. -CURRENT means you shouldn't touch it unless you are a developer, -RELEASE means end users can touch it, but it is not necessarily stable.. it's kind of a beta that's good enough for public consumption for the most part. And -STABLE is the ultra solid, will-not-crash, version.
So, 2.4.x = -STABLE
2.6.x = -RELEASE
2.6.x-mm = -CURRENT