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Kernel Feature freeze in 2 weeks?
According to an email written by Linus, "a feature freeze in about two weeks is the current plan", so people who wants their patch included (a hint to ISDN dev. guys) should work/write faster. I guess kernel 2.4 may be out this fall after all.
Eh? 1.2.15? Was that a typo, or should I be upgrading my 1.2.13 laptop?
Well, there are the 2.2.xprey kernels... I suspect they don't get as widely tested as they should, though. I know I'm guilty of not trying them out... I try out some (though not all) of the 2.3.xprey kernels, but I've never tried a pre- kernel for one of the stable series, except for the 2.2.0prey kernels... they were more an extension of 2.1, though.
Now as soon as we get an actual stable 2.2.x kernel (no, 2.2.10 doesn't count as stable), and replace X with something decent (such as Berlin), all will be well. Oh, and get Dungeon Keeper 2 ported over =)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I can think of lots of things wrong with X.
For the majority of users, the network transparency is not used. It just slows things down, sometimes by up to 10%. There should be some way of bypassing it for users who don't need/want it.
Antialiased fonts are not supported by default.
It is just plain slow compared to Win95 running on the same hardware. Scrolling is definitely slower (you can actually visibly see the windows redrawing themselves as you scroll, something i can never see in Win95 except on old 486s).
A bunch more I can't think of at the moment which probably belongs in the "what's wrong with X" ask slashdot article anyway...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
NFS was in a shoddy state in 2.2; 2.2.11 and 2.2.12, once Alan gets around to releasing them (I think he's here in Canada right now) should fix this reliably.
DK2 is going nowhere; I asked Bullfrog. (It was posted on linuxgames.com too)
Honestly! The aliens have been trying to teach humanity Transmeta-ese for generations, and yet there are some humans that still can't speak the language correctly. Motherbase, indeed! Where would the processor go, eh?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It's in Shakespere, so it must be ok. :)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I have never, ever heard anyone talk about the "autumn" season, in ANY context, in or around the United States, by ANYONE, other than visiting Britons.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I think you make a valid point. 2.2. has been the most inconsistant series of kernels I've run through on any of my machines since the late .99's WAY back when.
Example in point: I was getting random data corruption with every version of MySQL I've tried on a Dual Pentium II server under 2.2.5.
Upgraded to 2.2.9, and the problem was fixed. That's a pretty glaring problem, IMHO.
I have a machine at home that refused to run 2.2.7 or 2.2.8, 2.2.9 worked fine. I think there's an inherant problem with the even-stable odd-developer way of versioning things, that being that bug fixes in the even numbered kernels are never properly tested in a development-series before they come out as a new revision on an even number kernel. If 2.2.5 causes data corruption, it shouldn't have been released as a stable kernel, but with only two forks in the development, there's no other way to do it.
What really should happen is there should be a development tree, a stable current version, and a more formalized wider-distributed testing version of the next stable version other than the AC patches, so a new "stable" version isn't presented as the "new stable kernel" because it simply ISN'T.
Although I generally say 'fall' more than 'autumn,' I do use both.
But then I use two different pronunciations of 'either' interchangably, and I strongly support the use of 'y'all' as the new standard 2nd person plural pronoun. Maybe I'm just a freak.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I could make a lewd comment about rock-solid releases here, but I won't....
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Don't forget, the last day of fall is Dec 20th. I'm guessing that this is mainly a call to get people serious about closing on 2.4, and it's easier to be serious if you're at least somewhat serious about a deadline. In this case, Linus is trying to give us 2.4 as an early Christmas present, it would appear (even though he hasn't come out and said so).
I'm sure that the kernel will go out when it's ready, and no sooner. Nonetheless, it's good to state some goals up-front, and a "limited development cycle" goal for 2.4 is probably a good idea. Saying "feature freeze" and "2.4 in the fall" at least gets people starting to think in that manner, rather than leaving it open-ended and sprawling, as it happened with Linux 2.2.
(Personally, I feel 2.0 should've been 1.4, and 2.2 should've been 2.0, in retrospect. At least the numbering, relative amounts of features and release dates are more consistent that way. Ahhh well....)
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Please pardon my bout of mental flatulence.
LATEST-IS-1.2.13
--Joe
--
Program Intellivision!
There will always be bugs. There's no avoiding that.
For now, Alan Cox is maintaining 2.0.xx, and it appears (from what I saw on Kernel Traffic) that he is/will be responsible for future 2.2.xx releases as well. Progress continues to be made on cleaning up the remaining nasties in 2.2, and 2.2.11 should be available sometime soon. (I'm guessing by the end of August.) Alan stated (and I'm paraphrasing heavily here) at the introduction of 2.2 that people who are happy with 2.0.3x shouldn't feel any overwhelming need to upgrade right away, and that they wouldn't be left out in the cold. I'm sure a similar sentiment holds for 2.2.
IMHO, Linux 2.2.0 was far from perfect, but I must say that 2.2.10 seems to be far closer to "stable" than 2.0.10 was. In many ways, the stability and progress of 2.2 remind me of Linux 1.2 much more than it does of 2.0, which I believe is a very good thing. 2.0 took almost 30 revisions before it was truly stable, and it may even make it to 2.0.40 (although that's unlikely now).
I think we can expect to see a number of bug fixes for awhile to come, perhaps with some well after 2.4.0 debuts. After all, 1.0.9 came out partway into the 1.2 series, and you have a similar story for 1.2.15 vs. 2.0.x and 2.0.37 vs. 2.2.x....
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
I still don't think that 2.4 will be out by fall.
Althought its only been a few months since 2.2 came out and 2.3 is already about to be frozen.
There was a lot of new features being worked
on and not merged with the main kernel months
before 2.2 came out when 2.1 was frozen, and were
shot into 2.3 as soon as it was open season.
-Omar
Omar El-Domeiri
Northern hemishpere snobs?
How does Santa Claus dress in
the Southern hemishpere?
yeah yeah it's way off topic
I was planning my next machine to be on 2.2... It now looks like Linus, et al, may be finished with 2.4 before I even order any hardware.
Does anyone know if SuSE or Red Hat is planning another release based on 2.2?
Geeky modern art T-shirts
a) Linus decides, presumably based on the degree of change between the versions. I seem to recall seeing somewhere that he thought, in retrospect, that 2.0 should have been 1.4 and the 2.0 version number saved for what became 2.2... Either way, this next version will have only minor changes from 2.2, so it's clearly a 2.4.
:)
b) A feature freeze is when they stop adding new features and concentrate solely on working the stuff that's already there. Some feature freezes are more frozen than others - framebuffers, for example, were added to 2.1 after Linus' announcement that 2.1 was frozen.
As for the second part of your question... there's a difference between "stable", "bug-free", and "perfect". If it doesn't crash but doesn't work quite right, either, it's stable but not bug-free. If it does everything correctly but doesn't do everything you want, it's bug-free but not perfect. If it doesn't crash, does everything you could want, and does it correctly, then it's stable, bug-free, and perfect.
Note that for non-trivial pieces of software, "bug-free" and "perfect" are only theoretical conditions... they never happen in practice. There's always one more bug. Some pieces of software get closer than others, though...
Feature freeze != code freeze. Even the best programmers occasionally have bugs in their code, and that's why a feature freeze is a Good Thing, as it lets the coders focus on fixing the bugs.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Running a fresh new kernel is like putting on a warm pair of boxers strait out of the drier.. Mmm....
Corndog
Thousands of Linux advocates and Transmeta watchers are debating the significance of a recent email sent from Linus Torvalds to Alan Cox on 8-3-99. The email read in part:
/. thousands have suggested that he is implying that Transmeta has created a magic invisibility device which Torvalds will use to battle the fiendish crime lord Erik "The Red" Blowhard. /. "I think that Linus didn't mean to cc. the kernel list on this one. He's spilled the beans on the whole Transmeta operation. Think about it. Invisibility suits. This rules. FIRST POST."
/.
Probably. I really think it's a matter of "if this device really doesn't
have any ordering constraints, then we can use the new nifty feature to
make it invisible to most users".
The big question is what did Linus mean by those fateful words. On
"Wow man!" Shouted flak in a post to
Anthropologists have postulated that Linus' mails receive so much attention because he is seen as a sort of divine "priest king" by his followers. "Unfortunately, this means that if the pace of development on the kernel ever slows, the crazed worshippers may sacrifice Linus to regain the favor of their gods. History shows this pattern occurring again and again." commented Dr. Rajeev Papshigali of the University of Utah. "If the sacrifice is unsuccessful, we may see Linux users losing their faith and joining other strange sects. Possibly they may even convert to one of the daemonology cults that originated at UC Berkeley."
An AC suggested that this was an out-of-context quote from a mail about standard pc bus architecture. This was quickly moderated down as "flame bait" as was another post wondering if Linus could scratch his nose without having the event posted on
--Shoeboy