Linux Kernel 3.0? 369
An anonymous reader writes "A discussion on the Linux kernel mailing list between Linux creator Linus Torvalds, Linux guru Ingo Molnar, and a few others debated the name of the upcoming stable kernel release. The choices: 2.6 or 3.0. Evidently there's been enough improvements, most notably the VM, that they're leaning towards calling it 3.0..."
Comments by Linus (Score:1, Informative)
> > i consider the VM and IO improvements one of the most important things
> that happened in the past 5 years - and it's definitely something that
> users will notice. Finally we have a top-notch VM and IO subsystem (in
> addition to the already world-class networking subsystem) giving
> significant improvements both on the desktop and the server - the jump
> from 2.4 to 2.5 is much larger than from eg. 2.0 to 2.4.
Hey, _if_ people actually are universally happy with the VM in the current
2.5.x tree, I'll happily call the dang thing 5.0 or whatever (just
kidding, but yeah, that would be a good enough reason to bump the major
number).
However, I'll believe that when I see it. Usually people don't complain
during a development kernel, because they think they shouldn't, and then
when it becomes stable (ie when the version number changes) they are
surprised that the behabviour didn't magically improve, and _then_ we get
tons of complaints about how bad the VM is under their load.
Am I hapyy with current 2.5.x? Sure. Are others? Apparently. But does
that mean that we have a top-notch VM and we should bump the major number?
I wish.
The block IO cleanups are important, and that was the major thing _I_
personally wanted from the 2.5.x tree when it was opened. I agree with you
there. But I don't think they are major-number-material.
Anyway, people who are having VM trouble with the current 2.5.x series,
please _complain_, and tell what your workload is. Don't sit silent and
make us think we're good to go.. And if Ingo is right, I'll do the 3.0.x
thing.
Linus
Re:Mirror? (Score:1, Informative)
Google Archive of the threads [google.com]
Re:Mirror? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:This is the biggest problem with Linux (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Testing 2.5 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:GCC (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Make 2.6.3 usable, never install a dot-oh versi (Score:3, Informative)
Things just don't work like this. It's difficult to say before a release whether it will be extremely robust. The only way to test stability is to get a whole lot of people to pound on the kernel and find stability problems. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen until Linus declares that the kernel is stable. But he's really just saying "As far as I can tell, the kernel is stable."
Anyway, not everyone had results as good as you with the 2.2 kernels. In fact, you may recall that 2.2.0 wasn't stable at all; 2.2.1 was release shortly thereafter to fix a major bug. When I switched from 2.0 to 2.2, I had plenty of stability problems, mostly due to buggy drivers. Things gradually improved through the 2.2 releases, until I finally stopped having problems around 2.2.14. From looking at LKML archives, I suspect this is the norm, rather than the exception.
In fact, I would say that linux kernel development has the following general pattern:
Re:About the "new driver model" (Score:3, Informative)
AFAIK the new driver model basically puts all drivers in a uniform structure, primarily for the purposes of handling power management (sleep states) uniformly, and of moving towards a simple, standardized layout for
Re:Hm (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, no. I think this is the same philosophy as TCP/IP, which everyone just pronounces as "Tee See Pee Eye Pee", but really means TCP over IP (as IP is a lower level protocol, and TCP runs on top of it). By the same token, GNU/Linux would be GNU over (or on) Linux.
The way RMS says it, though, it sounds like he's trying to take credit for Linux. If he asked people to call the systems "GNU on Linux", it would come off as a lot more reasonable.
Re:uhhh... (Score:2, Informative)
Now, before you bash NS's marketing for this, remember the progression of IE was 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0 in less than a year, with 1.0 barely ever getting distributed. Plus rememeber Office apps. Access went 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, skipped 4, 5, and 6 to go to 7.0 in Office 95. At least Netscape has a valid reason for skipping 5.0 :)