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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."
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.
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?
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....
I'm sorry your forcedeth driver example is harsh. The driver is clearly labelled as "EXPERIMENTAL", and what's more it is *reverse engineered* because nvidia didn't want to give out the documentation to it. You are lucky someone was actually working on it at all.
As a sidenote, nvidia is now actually contributing to this very driver, however that has been since 2.6.7.
So this line of argument holds no water.
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."
So with development continuing longer on the 2.6 branch it might help decreasing the diversety of the different vendor kernels. At least it is worth trying.
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
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'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