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Novell Changes Enterprise Linux Kernel Mid-Stream
darthcamaro writes "Enterprise Linux kernels, from Red Hat or Novell, don't change version numbers inside of a release, right? While that has been the case for the last decade of Red Hat and Novell releases, Novell is breaking the mold with SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 service pack one. Instead of backporting new kernel features to the kernel they originally shipped with — which maintains software and hardware vendor certification — they've re-based their Linux kernel version altogether. '"There were some things that led us to update the kernel itself, which is something that we normally don't do: Neither SLES 9 or SLES 10 got a kernel update," Markus Rex, director of open platform solutions at Novell, told InternetNews.com. "But in this particular case, after deep discussion with our ISV and hardware vendors that gave us certifications, we felt in this case a kernel update was the appropriate step to take.'"
Third partys should be working to get their code included in the kernel, or should just deal with the changes. This has been said many times by the kernel developers.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
12 is going to have a major update to the GI, and some other obvious changes to make it more marketable. on the back end they have several teams working on projects with XEN, SAP... and they dont want to deviate for the timeline that they have presented.
At least renumbering the kernel is more honest than backporting the fuck out of kernel that's 3 or 4 years old, and leaving the version number the same.