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Is the Stable Linux Kernel Moving Too Fast?

Posted by Soulskill on from the committed-to-committing dept.

darthcamaro writes "Yesterday the stable Linux 3.10 kernel was updated twice — an error was made, forcing a quick re-issue. 'What happened was that a patch that was reported to be broken during the RC [release candidate] review process, went into the release, because I mistakenly didn't pull it out in time,' Greg Kroah-Hartman said. The whole incident however is now sparking debate on the Linux Kernel Mailing List about the speed of stable Linux kernel releases. Are they moving too fast?"

7 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. No by Stumbles · · Score: 5, Insightful

    its moving along just fine. People make mistakes, get over it, its not the end of the world. Considering its current release speed, the amount of changes made over the long term the Linux kernel folks have as good or better track record than most other software houses.

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  2. Compared to what? by bmo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Are they moving too fast?""

    Compared to what, Windows, IOS, OSX, What?

    >known bug that got by review
    >caught
    >fixed rapidly instead of waiting for the next release

    I don't see the problem.

    If this was a regular occurrence, yeah, it'd be a problem. But it's infrequent enough to be "news."

    Unlike Patch Tuesdays, which aren't.

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    BMO

  3. That's what he said! by fizzup · · Score: 5, Funny

    I mistakenly didn't pull it out in time.

  4. Re:WHAT THE FUCK! WHAT THE FUCK!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    WHAT THE FUCK!

    I can't believe this. I've been reading Slashdot since 1998, and I have never seen such a stupid suggestion in all that time.

    ...

    OK, one of those two must be blatantly false.

  5. Re:Time for an LTS Option by greg1104 · · Score: 5, Informative

    3.10 is the next LTS kernel by Linux standards. The existing long term kernels are 2.6.32 (as used in RHEL6, Debian Squeeze, Ubuntu LTS 10.04), 2.6.34, 3.0, 3.2.50 (used in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS), and 3.4.59.

  6. Re:WHAT THE FUCK! WHAT THE FUCK!!! by Zeromous · · Score: 5, Funny

    Only said fuck four times not including subject. Not Linus.

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  7. Re:TDD by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Informative

    You need to do some more reading on how Linux works.

    So do you.

    Linux is sort of a hybrid kernel now. Some hardware drivers are in ring 0. Quite a lot are no longer. libUSB for example allows userspace USB drivers. They work great. FUSE allows for user space filesystems which work great where absolute top performance is not necessary (eg sshfs, ftpfs etc).

    A good fraction of the bluetooth stack, for example anything above L2CAP (the Bluetooth world equivalent of the IP stack's SCTP) , such as ATT and GATT is all userspace (and the non kernel side sucks donkey balls by the way). That means I could (if it didn't suck massive donkey balls) control all the various profiles with the majority of the code in userspace.

    All the printer drivers are mostly in userspace (yay).

    The graphics (X11) is largely in userspace for now...

    Sound has a large userspace component and all the complex stuff like routing, mixing, and figuring out what to send where is in userspace (pulse or Jack).

    The Linux kernel as-is is more than capable of running a mouse driver in userspace.

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