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Linus on Kernel Version Numbering
walshy007 writes "In a recent thread it was asked what it would take for an 'unstable' 2.7 development tree to be created, to which Linus replied:
'Nothing. I'm not going back to the old model. The new model is so much better that it's not even worth entertaining as a theory to go back. That said, I _am_ considering changing just the numbering. Not to go back to the old model, but because a constantly increasing minor number leads to big numbers. I'm not all that thrilled with "26" as a number: it's hard to remember. I think the time-based releases (ie the "2 weeks of merge window until -rc1, followed by roughly two months of stabilization") has been so successful that I'd prefer to skip the version numbering model too. We don't do releases based on "features" any more, so why should we do version _numbering_ based on "features"?'"
The previous post might sound like a troll, but it makes a great point. Debating over version number schemes feels even more arbitrary and trivial than debating over, say, Code names for projects. Do version numbers or project names really have that much of an influence on how well code is written? If Windows had a kernel numbered 1.33.7 with a beta name of "Loopy Longhorn", would it be a better finished product?
Linus... has... jumped the shark. The number versions... his version control insanities... He's no longer Linux's greatest advantage. He's now doing more to hold back the community than anything else. (dear god this is going to hurt the karma)
Rename article title as "Linus on Crack". You are right, Linus is now only Linux's second greatest advantage, Andrew Morton is the greatest. Linus has always been erratic but great. Lately, he really stepped in it a lot, but he is still maybe the best bug hunter that ever lived. Mind you, he tends to have a large hand in creating the horrible complexities that lead to the need for the bug hunt in the first place, but then if he did not we would never have the pleasure of watching him exercise his art.
http://lwn.net/Articles/215868/
And yes, I agree, Linus is on crack about the version numbers. Just drop the 2. at the beginning and it will all be fixed.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
(because surely someone must care)
If the 2.6 is not going to change, drop it, it's redundant.
So we're down to 26. I personally find a name like "Linux 28" to be cool. "Linux 41 was released today...". There's nothing wrong with big numbers: see udev.
The problem with date-based numbering is that when you go from 2008.4 to 2008.10, it looks like you missed a few releases. And if you pre-announce a release, you have to meet your deadline or else rename the release.
So they could do what Gentoo does - 2007.0, 2007.1, 2008.0, 2008.1, etc. But you still have the problem that every year, you lose count of how many releases have happened. Was there a 2007.2 or did we just go to 2008.0 because we missed the Christmas deadline due to that last-minute security bug?
They could reduce the problem by using a longer period, such as a decade. (At 6 months for a release, for example, the number will only reach 20, which is not large.) But that's somewhat arbitrary. Plus, being in the 0th decade, we don't want to have 2.6.30 be called 0.3.
To reduce the complexity on all that, just drop the dates, and what's left is a single big number. No dots, no multiple numbers, easy. Linux 112 is fine by me.
Might also point out that the kernel driver maintainers have a standing offer: anybody who provides specs gets a free driver written, maintained, and kept in the kernel. Companies should be developing hardware specs and taking advantage of all that free development work.
Maybe what we should be doing isn't writing an NDIS wrapper for Linux, we need to write an NDIS wrapper for Windows. That way companies can provide the specs to the Linux team and then use the wrapper to drop them into Windows as they are written.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Summary: A stable API doesn't mean you're weighed down with cruft, and any argument based on that premise is nonsense. Any intelligent person making that argument is really saying that they think all drivers should be GPL.
Exactly.
It was written by Greg Kroah Hartman who famously broke the Philips webcam driver, causing the maintainer to quit.
http://www.smcc.demon.nl/webcam/
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Talk about rose tinted glasses.. The 2.4 /2.5 split that I remember left me at times with TWO unstable kernel series thanks to 2.5.x not being ready for production yet and maintainers trying to backport drivers and to 2.4.x so it could still handle the latest hardware.
At the worst of it I recall setting up a state of the art server with a SCSI card that crashed randomly on 2.4.x and wouldn't boot on 2.5.x series kernels. Lucky for me the bug was fixed in 2.5.x a week later.
The new way is easy.. new features and drivers get added to the latest 2.6.x-rc only and only bug fixes get added to the old kernels. This means that if I want to be sure I'm rock solid I just install the latest patch to the kernel I'm running and I can be sure no one has tried to add new features or drivers that would otherwise destabilize my stuff.
Why anyone would possibly want to go back to the old way is beyond me.
Show me where I said it's easy. I said that changes are frequently trivial....
Stability doesn't mean the interface never changes. Stability means that interface doesn't change on a whim... That small changes should be rolled up to minimize the frequency of changes. That compatibility changes should be announced well in advance. That two kernels with the same name and version number from multiple distributors provide the same interface... It means that backwards compatibility should be a goal, but not that you can't break it.
"Stable" doesn't mean "supported forever". It means "changes as little as possible".
I'm not sure how you derived the "Solaris kernel engineers are idiots" argument from what I said. Whomever (and I'm sure it wasn't an engineer) decided that maintaining compatibility was more important than fixing a security hole, is an idiot. If breaking compatibility is what you need to do to fix a serious issue, then you break compatibility. If you think I was saying meant that Solaris engineers should have been able to fix the security issue and still maintain compatibility, you need to go back and read what I said again.
This is bollocks. I no longer bother to check whether the hardware I buy is Linux compatible; I assume if it's selling in large quantities it will work. And it does. Maybe I'm lucky, but all the Linux users I know hold a similar view: hardware drivers are no longer an issue. Just for giggles, I recently had to reinstall Windows and my main desktop. Ubuntu took me an hour to install, and another hour to install all my favourite programs. Two weeks later, I have given up on finding a windows driver for an old Canon scanner that Ubuntu is more than happy to talk to. And don't talk to me about having to explain to India that no, I am not pirating Windows, I am merely reinstalling it, because it is so crappy that that is the only way to keep it functional is to reinstall it six-monthly.
[FUCK BETA]