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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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> Each version of the kernel requires applications to be
> compiled specifically for it.
FUD FUD FUD. No. no no no. NO!. Who writes this generic shit?. There's no truth behind the above statement and it just implies something that is not a problem.
I say its about time to get a real development branch going. I'm sick of 2.6 being less that optimally stable, its time for 2.7 to take the untested patches.
thisnukes4u.net
The kernel will fork to a new 2.7 branch. This is exactly what happens every iteration of kernel development. This looks like a case of poor journalistic understanding of the usual linux process and/or fear inducing sensationalist headlines.
Even if this was a more hostile type of fork it wouldn't matter. Some amount of forking is healthy in open source.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
In fact, out of all the news articles out there about linux 2.7, it seems (not that this surprises me) that slashdot went out of its way to pick one laden with the most possible negative FUD and the least possible useful information about what really is news with 2.7. A much better writeup can be found at LWN. In summary, the present situation is:
- The -mm tree of Andrew Morton is now the Linux development kernel, and
the 2.6 tree of Linus is now the stable kernel. This represents a role
reversal from what people were expecting last year when Andrew Morton was
named 2.6 maintainer.
- Andrew Morton is managing the -mm tree very well. Unlike all the previous
development kernels, the -mm tree is audited well enough that it is possible
to remove patches that prove to have no benefit (and this does often happen).
Bitkeeper is to some degree contributing to this flexibility, although
not every kernel developer uses it.
- The development process is going so smoothly that there may not need
to be a 2.7 at all; for the first time in linux development history the
developers are able to make useful improvements to linux while keeping it
somewhat stable. If there is a 2.7 at all, it will be used for major
experimental forks and there is no guarantee that the result will be
adopted for 2.8.
There is a story here, but you could easily be forgiven for missing it if you follow the link. The story is that linux development has changed, it is better than ever, and if (not when) 2.7 shows up, it's not gonna be the 2.7 that you're used to seeing.The writer of that article is an idiot. The linux kernel forks after every major release in order to accomodate large patches. How did we get to where we are today? Linux-2.4 forked into 2.4 and 2.5 to allow the major scheduler and other changes to be made on a non-production branch. Then 2.5 became 2.6 which was the new stable branch. Currently there are 4 maintained stable branches that I am aware of (2.0, 2.2, 2.4, and 2.6), having a new unstable branch is just the same path that Linux has been following for years. That writer needs to STFU and get a brain.
--Brandon
I think that either the writers of this article, or myself are not getting something here.
A couple of months ago there was a general upheavel over the fact that Torvalds et al. had decided not to fork a developement tree of of 2.6.8, but rather do feature developement in the main kernel tree. The message of the article (brushing aside the compiling-applications-for-each-kernel-FUD) seems to be that they have made up their mind and fork an unstable kernel branch of anyway.
What am I missing?
Firstly, the article is talking about linux itself, not linux distributions which are another issue and may or may not have "massive problems" of their own.
Secondly, linux (the kernel) already "forks" every time a new development version is opened. ie, 2.1, 2,3, 2.5 etc. All this is saying is that 2.7 is about to open.
"Fork" is not a dirty word.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
I imagine a future where I can download a copy of Linux and it would install on my system without any configuration
erm.. when did you last try installing linux, and which distro did you use?
I have recently installed ubuntu and fedora 3 on hardware ranging from a fairly old PII 400 with matrox gfx and scsi to an amd64 3000 with radeon 9200 gfx and serial ata, to an ibm thinkpad r40e.
All of these installed with almost no effort and Just Worked. (apart from power management on the laptop which took about 30 mins of googling to find a solution)
I even had hardware accelerated gfx on _all_ of the above machines with no extra configuration of drivers to download or install.
Really, if you want "easy to install and get running" give something like ubuntu or fedora a try. You might be pleasantly surprised.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Why is it that every Windows XP user thinks the goal of the Linux community is to convince windows user to make the switch?
Dude - just stick with Winblows. You have no time to "know linux", as you put it, so just stick with what you know. You can post on Slashdot either way.
Please, developers, don't dumb Linux apps/distros down so much that it looks and feels like Windows.
Hold on, take this into consideration before you hit that "flamebait" button. I'm responsible for a large number of Linux systems at a hosting center, and this is our single biggest complaint:
There needs to be a consistent driver API across each major version of the kernel.
A driver compiled for 2.6.1 should work, in its binary form, on 2.6.2, 2.6.3, and 2.6.99. If Linus wants to change the API, he should wait until 2.7/2.8 to do so.
The current situation is completely ridiculous. Anything which requires talking to the kernel (mainly drivers, but there are other things) needs either driver source code (watch your Windows people laugh at you when you tell them that) or half a dozen different modules compiled for the most popular Linux distributions. These days, that usually means you're going to get a RHEL version, and possibly nothing else. What happens when you're competent enough to maintain Fedora or Debian, but you don't have driver binaries? (Yeah I know, White Box or Scientific, but that's not the point.)
In fact, I recently had to ditch Linux for a project which required four different third-party add-ons, because I couldn't find a Linux distribution common to those supported by all four. We had to buy a Sun machine and use Solaris, because Sun has the common sense to keep a consistent driver API across each major version.
Yes, I've heard all the noise. Linus and others say that a stable driver API encourages IHV's to release binary-only drivers. So what? They're going to release binary-only drivers anyway. Others will simply avoid supporting Linux at all. LSB is going to make distributing userland software for Linux a lot easier, but until Linus grows up and stabilizes the driver API, anything which requires talking to the kernel is still stuck in the bad old days of 1980's-1990's. Come on people, it's 2004 and it's not too much to expect to be able to buy a piece of hardware that says "Drivers supplied for Linux 2.6" and expect to be able to use those drivers.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Yes, but drivers are part of the kernel, and so saying you need to recompile the kernel every time you recompile the kernel doesn't say much.
Now the binary parts of those modules mean that the kernel can't autorecompile them for you, but that's not the kernel's fault.
And if fact, the 2.4->2.6 kernel change did require a new version of modutils, and also, you could get improvements to some applications if you recompiled.
Fellowship 9/11
Someone decided that this is "bad" (and which finally opened the market for DOS/Windows), which I still don't fully get. If the software/system is still usable to me, I keep on using it (I'm still running my trusty old Atari in the studio for average MIDI sequencing). If I need to get a more powerful machine and/or the software will only be supported on this new machine -- what is this any different to todays Windows/Office situation?
With each new Windows the user interface changes (think of 3.11->95; XP anyone?), new data formats which are not backward compatible are introduced (.doc), and all they ensure is that you can load your old documents and please, please use the new formats as quickly as possible to make a lot of people buy the latest release...
If your Linux application breaks because it requires some stoneage whatever library, then just install it. For instance, people are used to carry a shitload of same-but-of-different-version DLLs on Windows systems and don't seem to object it.
With wide acceptance of RPMs we also accepted the breaks-if-lib-version-of-the-day-is-not-present kind of behavior... (The next logial step would be including required libraries in the RPMs just as every Windows program will come with all required DLLs.)
Well, this was fun to read. This article is about as educated about the subject as the average donkey.
Uhm, what gave MS the edge in the 80s was cheap i386 (well, actually 8088) hardware, and a relatively cheap OS (MS-DOS). Unix servers cost an arm and a leg in those days, and many companies/people wanted a pc as cheap as possible. Buying an i386 in those days meant running DOS, and the "marketplace" standardized around MS-DOS.
Utter bull. Upgrade kernels as much as you like, it won't break software unless you change major/minor numbers perhaps. The same thing will happen to windows if you start running stuff for win2k on win'95. But this is rather a matter of features in the kernel, not compilation against the kernel.
And the big news is? This happens every couple of years, with stable versions having even minor version numbers and unstable versions having odd minor version numbers. This helps admins and users to effectively KNOW which versions are good for everyday use, and which versions are experimental and for developers.
Well, imagine a Beowulf cluster... How long have those patches existed? There's several ways to build a cluster as long as you patch your kernel.
And why on earth would they want to do that? Linux is on the right track, so why bother with an entire rewrite of good functional code with good design.
It's also focussed on multimedia (xmms, mplayer, xine), webservers (apache), mailservers (sendmail, qmail, postfix)... I'd rather have people say that open source has focussed on internet servers than stuff it needs to make an OS run and wordprocessors. This like saying that an oven is primarily being used for making toast, while actually it also bakes cake, pizza and whatever you toss inside.
I'm sorry, this kind of article belongs in the trashbin. Either the journalist doesn't know what he's writing about, or he's being paid to know nothing about the subject. One of the things that keeps suprising me in business IT journalism is the lack of knowledge these people have about the subjects they're writing about.
you're placing the blame on linux. Windows doesn't create drivers for that fancy new camera you bought, the camera company does. Is the problem really linux, or is is the companies that don't release the drivers?
I think linux gets the blame, but you wouldn't expect microsoft to write drivers for your camera.
Case in point, I bought a HP scanner/copier/printer about a week ago, and it took about 2 hours of constant reboots, driver conflict errors, and other problems to get it to work correctly. The end result had me download almost 400MB worth of drivers from hp.com, uninstall the printer, and reinstall it with the new drivers. The drivers on the cd were bad. That's not an "everything works" scenario. Yeah, and that's with WindowsXPhome on a HP workstation connected to the printer with usb. A problem like that is NEVER a windows problem, it's always a problem with the device. If I were using linux, it would be linux's problem, and not the device.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
For a straight FAQ Q&A style of answering the question: http://www.tldp.org/FAQ/Linux-FAQ/kernel.html#linu x-versioning
Christ.
I'm not making fun of you. What you said was completely accurate, but when you're dealing with clueless people, you need to speak simply and plainly. "holy pengiun pee?" C'mon.
Quick example:
To Whomever:
Your most recent article regarding the upcoming linux fork may be confusing to your readers. The current version of Linux is 2.6. As new enhancements and bug fixes are developed and tested, they are added to this 2.6 kernel. This is similar to the way Microsoft puts out service packs on their current version of the Windows XP operating system.
When significant or cutting-edge features are added, the team in charge of maintaining the linux kernel needs to decide whether to "fork" the kernel to a new version. Again, this is similar to how Microsoft made decide to put a new feature into Longhorn instead of patching it in to Windows XP in a service pack.
Forking simply means that a new release of Linux is being actively prepared.
Knowing the Kernel developing community as I do, the threat of forking would result in a movement to unite in some way. Even if a fork occurrd, the population would essentially choose one and ignore the other leaving it to die.
The fact that patches exist, large or small, is what keeps the main kernel working. So for special implementations, patched kernels exist and everyone is cool with that. I have yet to see a patch that isn't from the main kernel and I don't forsee a situation necessitating that it not be.
I think we should look into the motivation of this article that cites no specific information or sources. It's pure speculation.
Because some people are overzaelous in their free software speeches to the masses. Linux users have a bad rep for a few bad elements.
Everyone should use what they want to use (at home at least). You like MacOS? Be my guest. Windows? Go right ahead. Linux? Hell yeah! People should be encouraged to try and use open source software, not forced. If people don't have the time to learn new things, let them use whatever they want.
Please, end-users, stop having this elitist feeling because you're running linux. If apps and distros want to dumb down their applications to increase the amount of users, let them. A good example is perhaps lprng versus cups. Cups is easy to setup and use, lprng is not that easy to setup and use. If normal users can setup their printservers using an easy tool, and power users can set it up with their favourite tool, who is going to complain? It's a matter of choice.
As soon as we make linux distributions easy enough for Joe Common to use, and decide that Random J. Hacker can't do things the way he wants to do them then we're in trouble. Then it's no longer a matter of choice, but a matter of locking in people to solutions that only work in 80% of all cases.
I agree. I recently installed Windows on an old laptop that I have. The laptop is old and slow so I installed Windows 98 on the machine. (Son needs it for writing papers in Word). The machine has a NetLux pcmcia ethernet card. Under Linux the network card worked out of the box, under windows it needs a driver disk. The driver disk doesn't exist anymore and neither does NetLux. So, no driver and not ethernet.
I am not a script!
It's better to break binary drivers early than to
break them late.
If all 2.6.x. kernels supported a driver, you'd just
accept that driver... until the 2.8.0 kernel comes
out. Then what? The vendor doesn't care; they got
their money. They either want to sell you new
hardware, or they've gone out of business. So you'd
then expect Linus to add some serious bloat for
supporting a driver ABI translation layer to let you
run ancient drivers on modern kernels.
Then what if you upgrade to a 64-bit processor?
You want Linux to emulate the old stuff????
That's what made Windows 95 so lovely.
The way Linus does things, you and these corporations
can't ever forget that binary drivers are 2nd-class.
I've seen a lot of the flaws in the article pointed out, but I'd like to note this too:
"Top contributors to the Linux kernel have been Red Hat and SuSE, he said. Also contributing have been IBM, SGI, HP, and Intel."
Usually, when talking about the Kernel, it's valid to at least note some individuals, such as, say, Linus.
Well, if that's FUD, then so are upwards of 70% of anti-Windows comments here.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
so if application I write took advantage of the say GDI bug in Windows, but my app was dependent on that bug being present, MS shouldn't fix the bug??
You see there's a flaw in your logic.
Not fixing a bug to allow some bad code that uses said bug to run is just plain ignorant.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
I'm only really replying to give your comment a bit more weight -- that writer is as dense as lead.
I'm not sure he's ever actually followed kernel development before.
For all those wanting to know whats going on without reading the linux-kernel mailing list, just run over to Kernel Traffic -- a summary of the week's happenings on the list.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I am not trolling nor do I disagree with the majority of your post. I am however a bit curious about this statement:
"It pisses me off that I can no longer use my webcam because the driver maintainer can't keep up with every variation of the kernel..."
Since this is a webcam I am making an assumption that this is more of a personal/desktop/workstation type role. With that in mind, is there any compelling reason that you must upgrade to the latest greatest kernel as opposed to sticking with a previous kernel that has worked along with your "webcam" driver that worked as well?
I am under the assumption that there are a lot of users that upgrade/acquire the latest greatest software and that in and of itself is not a bad thing but not always the smart thing. I'm referring to a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" line of thinking.
Can you or someone else inform me what the other part of this issue is I seem to completely miss?
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
What you're referring to is a stable ABI, not API. A stable, locked-down binary interface.
Yes your right, my mistake.
strong bias toward requiring people and organizations to release their software in source form
And this is the childishness of Linux. My Linux system has a nvidia tnt2 card because thats what I had around when I put the system together. Now I have 2 choices of drivers, nvidias official one, or the barely works nv in X. Now if I felt like being a childish zealot, the nv driver would be a no brainer, however I like to use what works best, and thats the nvidia binary driver. Anywhere else, this is fine, but not with Linux because Linus and others have decided that I shouldn't use the best choice for my card, I should either use an inferior solution (nv), or bought another card, also an inferior solution (spent money I didn't have on an open card that doesn't exist). They seem to go out of there way to break every binary driver they can with every release without even considering that the open source alternatives range from almost alright to compleatly useless. Linux can be a little hobby or an actual, usefull OS product and at the moment the kernel dev's have gone with acting like children and developing Linux like a little hobby.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Under Fedora (on the other hand), the NTFS driver (fully open, and PART OF the kernel) is not a default-included module (Fedora is not alone in this distinction) - so the module must be rebuilt (or wait for a new RPM, and download that). It's not the fault of 'Linux', per se, but the kernel developers could elliviate this problem by better structure versioning within the drivers - let the driver itself determine if the kernel is close enough.
On my RHEL 3.0/Oracle 9i server, you are certainly right - RedHat does a great job back-porting all 'patches' into the same build-number code base as the original release. This server was also purchased with RedHat in mind, and I had the freedom at the time to make sure that everything would be fully supported by the default 2.4 RedHat Enterprise kernel.
Finally, as a working manager - I'm happy when users can answer their own questions. On the other hand, I get a lot of technical respect from those who work with-me, and the requisite questions that go with that. It's too bad you don't have managers deserving of respect where you work.
In IT it's part of my job to know what is available, and how it works. I take that part of my job seriously.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.