Slashdot Mirror
Linux Kernel Moves To Github
An anonymous reader writes "Linus Torvalds has announced that he will be distributing the Linux kernel via Github until kernel.org servers are fully operational following the recent server compromise. From the announcement: 'But hey, the whole point (well, *one* of the points) of distributed development is that no single place is really any different from any other, so since I did a github account for my divelog thing, why not see how well it holds up to me just putting my whole kernel repo there too?'"
I clicked the link and here's what I got: "Server Error 500 - An unexpected error seems to have occurred. Why not try refreshing your page? Or you can contact us if the problem persists." with a cute parallax scrolling animation of GitHub logo falling down the Grand Canion. I've never seen 500 error on GitHub before.
Linus writes: "since I did a github account for my divelog thing, why not see how well it holds up to me just putting my whole kernel repo there too?"
Why not? Because you just broke GitHub! That's why!
And now let's all remain silent while the instant, distributed, cpu-intensive, encrypted https slashdotting of GitHub starts in 3... 2... 1...
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
Can we just agree that both are awesome and ClearCase _really_ sucks?
*frustrated user*
Why is HAL such a good idea?
I know that I can move a Linux installation image from one machine to another without a glitch, while Windows (which has a HAL) fails miserably if the source and destination machine vary in any non-trivial way.
Linus has said that when kernel.org is back up the github repo will be turned into a mirror.
Never have I had to agree with a post more.
My employers, not particularly tech-literate, have even seen this and learned it first-hand, and have had to get themselves out of the habit that "moving that server to new hardware means configuring a new one, effectively".
Move a Windows server - you can be in for a world of hurt unless you want to fresh-deploy it every time. Move a Windows-client, historically you'd be prepared for blue-screens because you have the "wrong" processor type (Intel vs AMD - requires disabling some randomly named service via the recovery console, for example), reinstalling the vast majority of the drivers (probably from a 640x480 safe mode) and even then can't be guaranteed to get anything back and working - not to mention activation, DRM, different boot hardware (e.g. IDE vs SATA), etc.
Move a Linux server - unless your OWN scripts do something incredibly precise and stupid with an exact piece of hardware, it will just move over. At worst, you'll have to reassign your eth ports to the names you expect using their MAC address (two seconds in Linux, up to 20 minutes in Windows and a couple of reboots).
Hell, you can even change the kernel entirely, or the underlying filesystem type or any one of a million factors and it will carry on just as before, maybe with a complaint or two if you do anything too drastic but almost always with no ill-effects and a 2-second resolution.
The only piece of hardware on Linux that I have to "fiddle" is a USB-Fax modem that has ZERO identification difference between two examples of itself. You literally have no way to assign them to fax0 and fax1 except guesswork - or relying on the particular USB port name which wouldn't translate between computers. But the install has moved through four machines (from an ancient office workstation with IDE - sacrificial hardware to prove my point about its usefulness -, to a state-of-the-art server class machine with SAS RAID6 and redundant power supplies) without so much as a byte-change - just me swapping the fax modems over rather than bothering to code the change.
And if the hardware breaks? No big deal - pull out the old machine and/or any random desktop machine (or even laptop) with enough ports, image it across byte-for-byte and carry on regardless.
People don't get that this is a BIG feature that they should be pushing - whereas with Windows I've heard (and seen) horror stories about RAID cards not working without the exact controller/firmware/driver combo that they were setup with, blue-screens and hangs and activation dialogs when you attempt something like that, not to mention HOURS of fiddling to get the image running exactly how it was on the original machine (if that's even possible). It goes along with the "plaintext" / "plain file" backup strategy (hell, my /etc/ is under automatic version control with two commands!), etc.
The point of an OS is to make the software independent of the underlying hardware. Windows lost that independence a LONG while ago (Windows NT / 95). Linux still has it because of the underlying design of the whole thing.
Don't even get me started on restoring an "NT Backup" without having the exact correct hotfix/service pack setup that you were backing up from...
Part of this is because there seems to be far fewer Slashdot readers than in the past. The stupider ones have moved to Digg, reddit and Hacker News, apparently
While I will admit there have been many Slashdot readers who have moved to other websites, I think the issue here is more that as a percentage of the web community Slashdot no longer is the dominate community of discussion. This is more because there simply are fewer geeks running around on the web any more as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other "social media" sites have more ordinary non-geek people.... any one of which can also post a link going viral that will dwarf anything Slashdot would ever produce. Many of the larger websites routinely expect a large number of visitors for some things they post, and can more than compensate for what happens when they become the focus of a lot of people at once.
Slashdot will still bring a huge number of visitors to a site and for somebody doing a homebrew website it can be a big deal, but I'd agree that due to improvements in hardware and better software management there isn't nearly so much of a problem any more.
Perhaps you should read this recent article on LWN about Avoiding the OS abstraction trap. The core point to consider that a HAL is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Linux's development doesn't need nor likely should it have a HAL like other closed OSs precisely because it doesn't deal with binary drivers. Instead, code is frequently refractored, reorganized, etc and the main issue is whether the user space ABI stays intact. All pushing a HAL would do is further constrain the kernel to maintaining another set user space ABI, which would likely end up being suboptimal since no HAL is perfect, and devote developer time to something that instead of forming organically as hardware/code demands would wall the expectations and the ability to provide functionality. Such might be great for a platform that's expected to be deployed, be infrequently changed, and for which driver development is a one-off affair, but that's pretty much the antithesis of the Linux kernel.
I don't think Linus is "happy with the current 3.x state of Linux", but I wouldn't be surprised if he's happy with the development process in place that he's a part of that can change the 3.x line towards something better. The Linux kernel is constantly changing. There's unlikely to ever be a state, ie a one point snapshot, where the Linux kernel will ever make most people happy because there's too many people with too many diverse goals and they all desire to change the Linux kernel from what is to what it could be. That's the great thing about an open development model, where people can make that happen. And if nothing else, they can make their own fork of Linux if the Linus tree doesn't make them happy enough.
While that's great news for ReactOS, and with no offense to the ReactOS developers, but if I did Linux kernel development, I wouldn't be jumping on board ReactOS development. ReactOS is a noble project and I'm sure in the future I'll get a lot of use out of it, but I view ReactOS as a stopgap project. That is, it's something like wine, which seems more than anything as a way to run the occasional Windows program and to allow those who are using Windows exclusively now to have a path to switching to using Linux (or OpenBSD or whatever) rather exclusively to run the occasional Windows program.
I say this primarily because Windows is a massive beast of an OS, produced through decades of development. Trying to re-implement it with incomplete documentation, reverse engineering, etc is a task like to take many times as long and as such I can even optimistically only see ReactOS as an open Windows 2000 or Windows XP clone for the 2020s or 2030s. Having more developers might speed up the process a bit, but assuming there's already a critical mass of developers to move development forward, I think the mythic man hour and the law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty quickly, especially when it's hard to delegate a lot of the work on things when the things themselves are most a mass of "stuff we don't have documentation for but needs implemented anyways".
Now, if one has a personal interest in having a complete open Windows clone, then please join ReactOS development. I'm certain they'd appreciate the help, even if it doesn't speed up the completing time very much. I certainly commend anyone who works to better an open project that will give advantage to oneself and others. But, I wouldn't seriously consider
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
There's this little project called Firefox that uses Mercurial. You might have heard of them.