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Linux Kernel to Fork?
Ninjy writes "Techworld has a story up about the possibility of the 2.7 kernel forking to accomodate large patch sets. Will this actually happen, and will the community back such a decision? "
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I call bullshit on this. When there's a 2.6 that is actually useable on my system (crashes less than once every 30 mins) I'll believe that. But I don't think it's going to happen until 2.7 splits off
I am trolling
People bitch because the driver APIs change much more frequently than can be rationally justified. The obvious reason is that many of the core developers are not experienced as they should be in doing the work they are doing. Which is not to say that they aren't great programmers, but that they have a very narrow view of what they are doing. They see their programming activities as the reason for linux's existance. Which is bullshit, linux exists for the end users, not for the developers. Additionally there is a certain amount of short sightedness exposed on a regular basis when support for some new device is being developed and it requires changes to core modules. USB is a prime example. A well documented USB-serial adapter requires changes to the usb-serial.c module as well as providing the support for the specific piece of hardware in a seperate source file. The only explanation is that the original developers of the usb-serial.c code weren't smart enough to do it right and properly abstract and encompass everything that would be expected.
Additionally the fact that the uhci-hid code actually has a comment in it that says (paraphrased) "windows does it like this, but we're going to do it like this because that's how we've done it before" indicates a certain stupidity and obstinance on the part of the developers. The kernel developers need to take the reality pill and accept that they have long since entered the ivory tower and need to be a little realistic and accept that the way windows interacts with hardware is going to be the target that the hardware developers aim for and therefore the linux kernel should interact in a similar fashion. It's ridiculous that in this day and age, after USB has become one of the mainstream hardware interfaces, that basic USB support is still broken for a lot of devices and it's not in the device specific code. It's in the UHCI and OHCI support that is fucked up.
Hey linux developers: it's better to be mostly right and function than to be 100% correct and not work. Your mentality didn't work for the Opera browser and it's one of many things holding you back.
The BSDs will all run Linux binaries too, as well as SCO UNIX and soon Solaris.
The important thing is stability (in the doesn't crash sense, in the no new major bugs in the main branch sense, and the changes slowly enough for people to maintain software for it sense (this applies to kernelspace stuff, not userspace stuff)), and Linux is currently bad at that because of the poor decisions made my the development team.
The distros are not up to the task of stabalizing the kernels they use.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Ah yes, but Andrew _is_ one of the core developers. He should know.
Last summer both Linus and Andrew said that when the patches would become too wild, they would consider increasing the version number again. not before. probably that time has arrived. And yes, increasing the version number _is_ a fork
Please folks don't react to this sensationnalistic journalistic bullshit as if it's the end of our world.
This is normal news, and good news. This newspaper is just showing of it's lake of brains. In other words they don't have anything dangerous happenning (Bush is apparently on holyday), so they're falling back on this.
Ernest J.W. ter Kuile
You need to wake up and realize that Linux is a dead end on the desktop for exactly the reasons you've cited. I've tried for 10 years now to use Linux as an everyday workstation OS and doing anything beyond web browsing, programming, and e-mail reading without resorting to VMWare or Citrix is next to impossible with a Linux desktop. Linus is adamant in his decision to oppose binary drivers and without binary drivers you will NEVER get the level of hardware support that proprietary operating systems engine. So choose... do you want to use cool new computer gadgets, webcams, USB doo-dads, firewire devices, etc. or do you want to run Linux?
The choice is pretty obvious and many of us have already made the switch: Linux on the servers, MacOS X on the desktop. I get to run quality commercial software with vendor supported drivers on a rock solid BSD base running on rock solid Apple hardware. It's a no-brainer to see that Apple has delivered the platform that most of us had only dreamed about 10 years ago when we first started fiddling with Linux on our desktops.