The Linux Weather Forecast

kwabbles writes "The Linux Foundation launched the Linux Weather Forecast yesterday. It features 'current conditions' for kernel development, a 'short-term forecast,' and a 'long-term forecast.' Now developers and organizations that want to see when certain implementations/fixes are planned can find answers at this informative and handy site."

Comments

UIO: Userspace IO drivers.

[serviscope_minor]

Wow. Just wow. This is a fantastic development. This is an excellent complement to FUSE (userspace filesystems), libUSB (userspace USB drivers), X11 (many graphics drivers), sound mixing, and all the other random stuff farmed out to userspace where possible.

Having develpoed in both user and kernel space, I know that userspace development is vastly easier: a crash is now only a segfault, debugging can be done easily and the most suitable language for the task can be used. This makes it faster and easier to develop both robust and efficient code.

But, come on and look at Linux: it's slowly becoming a microkernel: everything that can be in userspace is slowly moving there. And that is a good thing.

Re:UIO: Userspace IO drivers.

[serviscope_minor]

I agree. Userspace drivers open the way for non-GPL dirvers. Whether you're idealistic or pragmatic, closed source drivers are not a good thing. Just look at the stability of the Intel graphics drivers, compared to ATI (awful) and Nvidia (quite good, but still can causes crashes).

Sadly, UIO can be abused to make non GPL drivers. However, since there's now a nice socket, reverse engineering should be easier, and also I expect that the OSS benefits will greatly outweigh the few hardware manufacturers with misplaced priorities.

Look at FUSE for the wonderful profusion of interesting filing systems. Now Linux has all those features missing from traditional UNIX. You want versioned filesystems? Choose your VCS. Want a database filesystem? Choose the one which uses your favourite database backend. Want a real (as in works for GUI and commandline programs) recycle/trash bin? Got that too (a feature which is unique to Linux as compared to other mainstream OSs).

And so on. Userspace is wonderful, but can be abused. But it's too wonderful to ignore.

Re:UIO: Userspace IO drivers.

[Ant P.]

Yeah, but at least with a kernel driver you _know_ it's crashed.

If that X server hangs is the display just frozen, has X hard-locked the console, or is the whole thing hosed requiring a hard reset? In times like that you're left with crashing the kernel manually using the reset button because there's no other way out. KGI/GGI was supposed to solve that particular problem, but nobody seems to care.

I've had USB devices hang the machine too, but X11 is a really bad offender.

That's great, but...

[xednieht]

Is there a way to summarize the summary page with a couple of graphics or pictures and then offer links to greater detail. That first page is a lot to digest at a glance. Weather.com does a good job summarizing mountains of info, perhaps a similar approach for the summary would help.

Also, the xml feed is has a slight syntax error:

XML Parsing Error: xml declaration not at start of external entity Location: http://www.linux-foundation.org/index.php?title=Li nux_Weather_Forecast&action=history&feed=atom
Line Number 49, Column 1:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
^

Linux Foundation

[jshriverWVU]

Not to sound lame, but what is the Linux Foundation? I know gnu fosters development of a lot of software, sourceforge hosts a lot of projects, linus and the huge team does the kernel, Ubuntu/Redhat/Debian/Suse/etc take all of the software to make a distribution. I just dont see what the LF does for the community.

Not flaming, if they provide a good resource more power to them.

I'd just like to see fewer regressions...

[Erwos]

Something that drives me particularly nuts about Linux is the number of regressions that happen. Don't get me wrong - I love Linux. But it feels like, in their haste to get things done better than ever, they sometimes reintroduce old flaws.

Case-in-point: Firewire, and more precisely, multi-LUN support. Sounds esoteric, but it's actually not too uncommon to find hardware that needs it these days. When 2.6 came out, 1394 (as a whole) was just plain broken. They finally got it fixed in 2.6.12 or so, but then, in 2.6.22, they introduced a new Firewire stack - which promptly broke multi-LUN support. Maybe not everyone needs this, but I'm heavily dependent on it. I'm now in a position where I can't do any kernel upgrades until I've confirmed the fix has made it into 2.6.23 final.

I know it's something of a petty gripe, but I'd appreciate it if Linus could do a better job of making sure regressions like that didn't slip back in. I don't need a repeat of the bad weather that we've already had. :)

Re:Like predicting Sunny in California

[Jello B.]

Compiz Fusion. Microsoft was chasing Compiz's taillights with Windows Vista.