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? "

Comments

Re:From the article...

[FooBarWidget]

Until you see a game failing to load in XP SP 2, no matter what you try.

Re:From the article...

[Darren Winsper]

Freedom Force.

Re:I'd Like to Run Linux -- Just No Time

[aldoman]

Don't get too happy. A lot of problems are solved, but there is a HUGE problem in the form of installing software.

Currently they are 4 'methods':

Compile from source
RPM/DEB
apt-get/yum
Custom installer

Compile from source is not going to work. Takes too long, requires too much knowledge, requires lots of source already on the system.

RPM/Deb is useless for anything but the most simple tasks, because of dependancy hell.

apt-get/yum is good, infact it's the closest we have at the moment. However, it's has 3 huge downsides:
1) it requires a central server that can go down, hacked, go offline due to financial issues, whatever.
2) it requires the central server organization to test and ensure the packages work, which really should be the packagers job. This results in it being slow, and can take weeks before new versions of software come onto the apt server.
3) Some packages due to their legal status cannot be hosted. Also, for commercial software it would require each company to host their own apt server as most distro's would not want to bear the costs of distrubuting their software.

Dumbing Down Apps

[TheShrike]

Please, developers, don't dumb Linux apps/distros down so much that it looks and feels like Windows.

Too late. For example, Where have all my preferences gone?.

Or check out the open dialog used for importing bookmarks into the latest Mozilla.

Gnome2 is the epitome of this question, not necessarily in look/feel, but in abstracting things away, burying preferences in themes, oversimplifying, and removing options.