A Linux Kernel More Stable Than -stable 142
jfruhlinger writes '-stable' is the term for the current Linux release most suitable for general use; but as Linux moves into more and more niches, there's a need for a kernel more stable than -stable, which is updated fairly regularly. Both enterprise and embedded systems in particular need a longer horizon of kernel stability, which prompted Greg Kroah-Hartman, then at SuSE, to establish a -longterm kernel, which will remain stable for up to two years. Now there are moves to get this schedule formalized — moves that are a good sign of Linux's long-term health."
Good (Score:2)
Maybe other open source projects take the hint and provide something where I can install and not worry about it breaking every few months. You don't buy a new car every month.
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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
hit "y" if needed.
Yay, done with maintenance for a while.
I have yet to have an issue with the machine and I've been using it for 4 years as a fileserver, media-center, router and various other tasks.
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Speaking of which...
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Speaking of which... I think I guessed that you were about to suggest backup? Maintenance isn't limited to upgrades, you know! Preventative maintenance is much more effective than hard disk recovery!
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When was the last time you performed a backup on your wireless router?
Embedded systems is the focus of this article.
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Embedded systems is the focus of this article.
Indeed. When was the last time you did a kernel update on your washer or car? Yet, the manufacturer must be able to do so if a serious flaw is discovered down the road.
2 years is laughable. In the embedded world, 10 years would be more like it.
Also consider the need for long-term stable kernels outside the embedded world. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is supported for 7-10 years with a support agreement. RHEL5 is still at 2.6.18, and will stay so for years. Maintaining compatibility is paramount to many bu
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Long time ago: it is possible to save the settings to file, at least on mine (which is a Linksys WAP54G, so technically a access point. My router is a net5501-70 running OpenBSD) The file must be sitting on the file server (which is backupped nightly). I don't think my wireless routers configuration has changed significantly since that backup.
Not that that backup will help much, if the WAP fails, it most likely will be hardware failure . I've had it since May 2005 and unless it stops working, I have no r
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Avoid that bothersome last step.
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only repeat the last step. more efficient in the long run.
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echo alias update=''sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude -y upgrade" > ~/.bashrc
From any subsequent bash session, just run 'update'. More properly it should be added to .bash_aliases with its inclusion enabled in .bashrc, but splitting hairs kills the fun. =)
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Snap! That little mistake has overwritten a few too many files in my day.
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I prefer to use my computer then to be told to restart every 10 minutes.
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Wow, impressive that you dared to talk about system updates with us...does Windows Update now also update the whole system including installed client applications? Does it maintain a complete repository of software, easy to install with just a handful of clicks? Does it cleanly remove installed software? Does it automatically pull in needed dependencies? No? Such a pity...come back when you've learned the difference between a "Package Management System" and "Windows Updates".
Oh, and while we're talking abou
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Oh, come on, don't taunt the Windows user. He's just working out his inferiority issues. Maybe this exposure to a better way will help him mature to a real operating system.
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Wow, impressive that you dared to talk about system updates with us...does Windows Update now also update the whole system including installed client applications?
No Linux distro does this - unless you limit yourself only to applications provided by that distro. Who does that? If you limit yourself to only to stuff that comes with Windows, then yes, it would update everything.
Does it maintain a complete repository of software, easy to install with just a handful of clicks?
Yes.
Does it cleanly remove installed software?
Yes.
Does it automatically pull in needed dependencies?
Yes.
No? Such a pity...come back when you've learned the difference between a "Package Management System" and "Windows Updates".
Look, I realize you just discovered Linux last week and now you want to trumpet its virtues loudly and feel superior - that's a pretty common reaction to people who've discovered new technologies. "Look at me, I use *LINUX* and I am superior!" Yeah, yeah - but when you get out of
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No Linux distro does this - unless you limit yourself only to applications provided by that distro. Who does that? If you limit yourself to only to stuff that comes with Windows, then yes, it would update everything.
Limit? Okay, we'll assume that you're a video/music/image-editor/software-developer/engineer and therefor you need software which is not available via the repository. But for everyone else (especially the so called 'average' user) is 'limit' the wrong term, they'll barely scratch on the surface of the available applications. And for everyone else there are repositories available which can be easily added to the system.
Does it maintain a complete repository of software, easy to install with just a handful of clicks?
Yes.
Okay, I've got, let me check, 2,500 applications ready to install. How much are you offeri
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echo alias update=''sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude -y upgrade" > ~/.bashrc
echo alias update=''sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude -y upgrade" >> ~/.bashrc
wuauclt /detectnow
-or if you prefer to use your computer instead of typing on it: Start - Windows Updates - Check For Updates
On my Linux machine, I can do something similar...
Click System > Administration > Update Manager
Linux gives you the option of typing or doing the clicky thing.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Yay, done with maintenance for a while.
This isn't about your server or your workstation.
Its about your wifi routers ADSL modems, cable modems, and electric toasters , and everything else that has linux embedded these days, many millions of which are attached directly to the net, serving as your first line of defense.
Not one in a hundred wifi routers get updated over their life span.
I have servers running ancient linux. (Embarrassed to say just HOW old). They do specific tasks and have no user accounts, and they reside on the Local net, but still any disgruntled employee could own them if they tried. There is no patch source for these old installations, and trying to back port security patches is simply a non-starter.
Two years is not enough. 5 years is marginal. Even then, I want nothing but security patches. If I need the next version of something I'll upgrade, but for embedded devices or single purpose servers, all I need is security fixes.
Use ancient linux's (Score:1)
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We are talking about openWrt and similar distros.
Chances are that crackers will go first on your router where most users have their DNS/DHCP and termination for all your network devices.
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Not one in a hundred wifi routers get updated over their life span.
Uh if they really don't get updated what's the difference between -stable and this proposal?
The whole point about this proposal is something keeps getting updated for years or even longer.
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Better: pacman -Syu
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No, but you get your car serviced every few months...
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That entirely depends on how much you drive, no? Mine is scheduled for a maintenance ever 15000km or every year. Given I drive 20000km/year, maintenance is about every nine months. My car is old (11.5 years) and a gas engine. I know that many newer diesel engines only require maintenance every 30000km or every two years.
Well, of course you could still define "few months" as "less than twelve months".
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You don't buy a new car every month.
You don't frequently install or update anything in your car either (I cannot think of any other way in which it can break every few months). I am sick of the comparison between the car and desktop-computer industries.
Re:Good - sacrilege (Score:4, Funny)
"....... I am sick of the comparison between the car and desktop-computer industries."
This is /. How dare you sir.
for such a sacrilegious statement you should go to the front counter and hand in your slashdot number and name /. without Car analogies would be like.... like....., like a car without seats.
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Ubuntu has their LTS releases, which aim for the same thing. No "new feature" releases, just stability and security upgrades.
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Slackware 9.0 (released in 2003) still receives security updates.
Red Hat (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't this basically what Red Hat does - back porting security and bug fixes to an established maintenance point for the kernel and many of their other packages?
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And then put that into your embedded device....
Ya, that'll work.
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This does not help help RH most direct competitor SUSE.
To me this looks like it could be a SUSE ploy to get a stable kernel to compete with RH while not having to do all the work. Debian would like this as well.
Or being less cynical they are making something that other distros can use like OBS and zypper ended up being used by Meego.
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Why not? All of the Red Hat kernel source is available. They stopped doing the 1000s of patches in the SRPM thing, but it's still source. (Oh the horror of that old patch structure... maybe it was handy if you were trying to undo Red Hat's changes, or just "lift" their changes into a different kernel version. But if all you wanted was to work around the bug in your stupid TSSTCorp DVD burner....)
Or Red Hat's competitors could put the same effort into maintaining their kernel snapshot... but at some poin
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Re: BSD. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hello constant updates is not a sign of Stability!
The problem is there isn't much need for commercial support for something that doesn't break all the time.
I have used RedHat in a server farm of over 1000 systems and I have used FreeBSD in servers systems that were a little smaller.
The BSD generally run's behind in code version on the application side, but these are more stable and not constantly pushing the bleeding edge. It's used inside Router and Big server farms and so tends to be better on the network side.
With Red hat we had so many problem with the BNX/BNX2 10 GB ethernet drivers, it was a nightmare scenario with over $500,000K in blade servers constantly crashing, there were the HP vendor drivers, and the RH drivers and the Linux main line drivers, which we ended up building and using till RH caught up.
FreeBSD is hardly dead. Some of the fastest network drivers exist in FreeBSD.
At this point the BSD's are almost a flavor of Linux. There is a Linux compatibility layer also.
I have written drivers for Both BSD and Linux. BSD drivers are generally much clean and more straight forward and it's because of them that many HW vendors bring up a BSD driver first even if they choose never to share it.
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With Red hat we had so many problem with the BNX/BNX2 10 GB ethernet drivers, it was a nightmare scenario with over $500,000K in blade servers constantly crashing, there were the HP vendor drivers, and the RH drivers and the Linux main line drivers, which we ended up building and using till RH caught up.
Next time build a test lab so that your QA group within IT, can validate the software you're about to deploy.
Lack of preparation on your part doesn't constitute an emergency on anybody elses.
Next time, please sign your comment with your company so I can validate that I do not have any working relationship or consume your company's products.
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Dear Mr Puck,
> please sign your comment with your company
You don't sign with your company nor do you even use your real name, you are hardly in a position for such a lecture.
The company was Citrix. They did validate the hardware with load simulators running for a weeks and the problem wasn't apparent.
But a live customer load with over 190,000 live TCP session on some hosts it could still take weeks before we say a glitch, and it wasn't clear what the c
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Yeah, you say that till you have driver issues on your band spanking new Dell running Windows Server. HockeyPuck, has a point that you should lab the performance of the box before deploying a bunch of Blades. The kind of money you have to put down for that! It's always wise to make sure they're going to work.
But who hasn't been there when you trust the vendors just a little too much, purchase a bunch of new gear and the OS and the Hardware simply doesn't mesh.
An example of the gamble you play with new tech.
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I am http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsokol [linkedin.com]
http://www.videotechnology.com/ [videotechnology.com]
http://churchofbsd.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
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Anyone who is comfy installing all applications and back porting security fixes for them that is. The packages are less than stable on FreeBSD.
Do Firefox Devs Dream of Stable Releases? (Score:5, Funny)
Have you ever taken a Kroah-Hartman test? It's a test designed to provoke an emotional response.
Hartman: You're in a repository, compiling a kernel, when all of a sudden you look down.
Dotzler: What version?
Hartman: What?
Dotzler: What version?
Hartman: It doesn't make any difference what version - it's completely hypothetical.
Dotzler: That's what I've been trying to convince the world all week!
Hartman: Maybe you're fed up. Maybe you want to be by yourself. Who knows? You look down at the screen and see the codebase in TortoiseGIT. It's crawling toward release.
Dotzler: TortoiseGIT? What's that?
Hartman: You know what TortoiseSVN was?
Dotzler: Of course!
Hartman: Same thing.
Dotzler: I've never seen a stable UI. But I understand what you mean.
Hartman: You merge some code down, change the UI, and increment the release number just for the hell of it, Asa.
Dotzler: Do you make up these questions Mr. Hartman? Or do Slashdotters just write cheap pop culture parodies instead of working?
Hartman: The project lays on its back, its belly baking in the white-hot flames of a thousand angry users, beating its legs trying to make itself stable but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping.
Dotzler: What do you mean I'm not helping?
Hartman: I mean you're not helping! Why is that, Asa? (pause) They're just questions, Asa. In answer to your query, it was either this or a filk based on a Rob Zombie song. It's a test, designed to provoke an emotional response. Shall we continue?
Dotzler: Nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch!
Hartman: Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about your mother.
Dotzler: My mother?
Hartman: Yeah.
Dotzler: Let me tell you about my mother... *BLAM BLAM BLAM*
"More stable than -stable", that's our motto.
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Thank you. I have 5 mod points, but I posted above and don't want to undo my trolling lol - but thank you. This. Is. Brilliant!
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Yes, I clicked back after posting and the mod listboxes were still present, causing my temporary state of incorrectness. Thank you anyway.
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I want more runtime, fucker!
You Kernel Runner? (Score:2)
Do you like our kernel?
It's unstable?
Of course it is.
Must crash a lot.
Often. It seems you feel our work is not a benefit to the public.
Kernels are like any other software - they're either a benefit or a hazard. If they're a benefit, it's not my problem.
Isn't Greg still at SUSE? (Score:3)
Why does the summary say "then at SuSE"? Greg's still working for SUSE/Novell as a Linux kernel developer fellow [google.com] right?
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He was then at SuSE. He still is, but he was at SuSE then too.
Good point! (Score:1)
You're right - it wasn't contradictory or wrong just an unusual way to highlight it :).
What will this do to version numbering? (Score:3, Interesting)
Since the -longterm is going to have to be based off of a -stable release and be maintained off that branch, we end right back where we were, with four version numbers, each level denoting the number of rounds of fixes applied to the number to the left. Only there's now going to be increased stagger, since stable will lag behind the release and longterm will lag behind stable. (They have to.)
If we're going to have lots of version numbers, then going back to the odd/even minor digit makes more sense than to do rapid increments. Yes, this pushes us out to five digits, which is borderline insane, but it is then five digits that carry specific pieces of discrete information rather than four digits where two don't necessarily convey a whole lot.
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It sounds like -longerm is just this guy's fork. I don't think it will affect how Linus numbers the mainline kernel.
Re:What will this do to version numbering? (Score:5, Informative)
"this guy" is Greg K-H, second-in-command to Linus and the maintainer of the -stable tree. His arguments were one of the main reasons Linus changed the 3.0 numbering. Greg is just proposing that he maintains another tree officially, not a "fork".
As for version numbering, I think there will be 3 numbers - first two for mainline releases, and one more for stable/longterm patch level. I don't think -longterm will be needing an extra number.
its not stable (Score:1)
its ultra championship edition stable!
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You've been playing too much Unreal Tournament. Not that that's a bad thing (unless you're playing it in software rendering on a Pentium!)
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it is a street fighter reference.
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what, no turbo?
(Linux vs Capcom: CVS Chaos)
Another thought... (Score:3)
Yes, a static baseline is great for certification programs such as EAL [commoncriteriaportal.org] and FAA approval [lynuxworks.com], but it's not the only sort of "stable" that you want. Data centres want a "carrier-grade" OS (which means five nines reliability). They don't necessarily care if they have to patch, since you can now hot-patch the kernel without taking it down, but they absolutely do not want the software to show any unreliability whatsoever. They'd likely get upset at having to patch more than once a year, since in-situ patching isn't always safe, but if you're limited to a few minutes downtime a year on a server as an absolute maximum (this is ignoring failover, etc, that's a whole different issue than a specific physical or virtual server instance being five nines) then I could see it being tolerated a whole lot more than a blind kernel upgrade at year's end.
(This assumes that the hot upgrades can be made fault-tolerant enough that a brown-paper-bag release - you know they're going to happen on any tree eventually - can be backed out without violating five nines.)
Negaverse (Score:4)
Wait, a piece of software moving towards a slower, more enterprise-friendly release system, in direct contradiction of recent trends (see: Firefox 10)?
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What you're missing is that Firefox doesn't want to target the enterprise. What Mozilla is missing is that if they fail to target the enterprise, IE pretty much carries the day there.
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Who is Mozilla targeting? If they are not going after the enterprise are they going after the basement hobbyist? Or the firefox developer? Surely grandma would like to provide an easy answer to the request "Grandma, click on Help then About Firefox, and tell me the number next to Version..."
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Nope, they're targeting the other 99.99% of the population you chose to ignore.
Enterprise? (Score:2)
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NCC-1701-D [wikipedia.org]?
(i.e, Life support: When you just can't afford to turn it off and then on again.)
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Holy stranded preposition, Batman! I didn't even think you could a noun out from two clauses deep, but there it is.
Stable = Older (Score:3)
By definition a stable system has to be running older code that's been fixed and is well understood rather then "the latest" updated code.
If your constantly churning and updating you can not be stable.
Red Had run's behind the main Linux distribution to get added stability.
But FreeBSD which seems old and stodgy is like that because of the emphasis on stability over features and improvement.
It's also simpler under the hood which is also important for Stability.
But it all depends on what your trying to do. GUI vs. Server.
For Server I'd go with BSD.
For GUI I'd go with Windows, Apple OS-X (BSD variant), maybe Android (haven't developed on it yet) X Windows just sucks.
For Embedded , I'd go with what ever the eval boards ship with. Usually Linux these days. (Certainly not PSOS or QNIX)
At this point I can compile the same code on all of these using GCC and run them equally well. They are all Posix compliant. SDL run's on all of them.
Java also run on them. So does Flash, LLVM, TCL, PERL, RUBY, Python or what ever langue du jour.
Let's end the religious wars on OS's, it's about getting your work done. The OS is just a platform for the language your want your code to run on.
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VxWorks or Microware OS/9 still kick Linux's butt in the RTOS world for reliability and strength/stability of codebase. Just sayin'... if you're building missile systems, you're probably reaching for one of those.
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Xvworks and microware, yuck.
I am a video specialist and love doing real time control stuff and embedded systems. I have yet to understand what they are talking about with RTOS. I can do microsecond accurate timing now in vanilla BSD or linux. Yes 1/1,000,000 second timing. Verifiable on an oscilloscope from user space or in drivers.
Overall I think the opensource is the important part of stability. The more eyeballs looking at code the more solid it will be.
This is why new code should be treated with some s
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Ahh, been using Linux since 1995. Never seen that "more solid" thing come out of open-source yet.
Reason is, most devs don't look at code, they write it. Looking at someone's old code and trying to fix it is something a smaller percentage of devs do than those who just slap more code out.
Linux's stability lies in the original design (UNIX), not so much in the "many eyes/many hands" thing. That and distros who are willing to slow the process so businesses can actually use the stuff.
And the most stable thin
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Agreed.
Just look at the god-awful mess GNOME just became again, outside of kernel-space. Or try to get LDAP authentication working on 100 servers already running on different distros.
Linux can't even hack centralized authentication properly yet. I love Linux and working on it, but it's kludge on top of kludge. Those that work, do so pretty well. The rest is a mess.
How to make Linux stable (Score:2, Insightful)
1) insert Windows install disk
2) c: format
3) run win7.exe
4) PROFIT!!!!
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The old "increasing your IQ by giving yourself a lobotomy" argument... I am not impressed.
Who the HELL are you?!? (Score:1)
I'm the dude who envisioned, designed, developed and shipped both autoexec.bat and Clippy, so clearly I know my shit. What the hell have YOU ever done? You know what, I don't have time for your jibber jabber, I have to finish the bootware for the Kin 3. It's gonna be the iPhone killer.
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2 years isn't a lot (Score:4, Interesting)
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And a stable API, anytime? (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux could have dominated, if there was some sort of stable API for third-party developers. Developing for the Linux platform quickly becomes an experience of insanity, when you start doing compatibility test, and the test matrix just explodes.
I'd say, if it was too hard to keep API stable across all versions of Linux, maybe we should at least have API stable for all minor versions, say, 2.6.x?
I know all the arguments for moving faster, for keeping a cleaner code base, etc. But hell, what good is a shiny kernel if the apps can't keep up with?
Just venting, from my experiences working with kernel module.
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http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/stable_api_nonsense.html
It's not the apps that don't keep up... (Score:1)
...it's the external drivers - as you point out in your post it was a kernel module that caused you massive grief. Most applications don't depend on out-of-tree with kernel drivers and thus are insulated from the kernel changes (this is why you can often get away with running a hand rolled modern kernel on "old" distributions).
However, the moment you have touch out-of-tree drivers your experience is going to be ongoing pain and it generally doesn't matter which out-of-tree driver you are using. If you are e
Real-time Kernel Patches Synchronisation? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the target for a long-term stable kernel is embedded systems, then I would suggest having some sort of arrangement with the real-time kernel patches [kernel.org] which typically don't release with every kernel.
If, for example, 2.6.39 was chosen as a -longterm, it's unattractive for many embedded developers without the option of the -rt.
Um, thats pretty much what RHEL does! (Score:1)
Stable is stable enough: more stable is... (Score:1)
Once a kernel is reasonably stable you should work elsewhere. Trying to still a floating boat will not make it float any better. The boat floats.
planned obsolescence (Score:3)
Kroah-Hartman says - "Consumer devices have a 1-2 year lifespan" -- this is a sign of our times. Just make junk that last a couple of years at best, and then chuck it. It would be far better to create devices that last twenty years and can be updated and repaired. This is why I like 'dumb phones'- cellphones that are less likely to be pwn3d, last longer, are cheaper, tougher, and easier to use. Ah, I am going to miss you, Nokia, and Motorola, and Siemens, and...
2 Years is Long Term? (Score:1)
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"I heard you like frosty piss in your frosty piss, so I frosty piss in your frosty piss so you can frosty piss while you frosty piss."
Keep your Coors Light commercials to yourself.
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I, for one, would never have guessed that. Apart from being illogical, the statement had no value regardless of the .
In fact, it's a first post, that's all there was to it, until you told. So "the upshot of all this is" that - you advertised Coors Light more than the OP! Thank you!
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Wow! That's the first time the lameness filter has eaten parts of my post like that - and considering how lame some of my posts are.,, anyway on with the corrections.
After "regardless of the" there's a variable place holder in angled brackets called insert liquid here. After told, it said "me". Until you told me, it was a first post, see?
Thank you...
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And you must use & to get <.
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What if I call it Slow Loris?
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I usually have this problem more on Windows than on Linux. I'd says 95% of the time it's not really high CPU-usage, but disk or other device activity that grinds everything to a halt.
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