Linux 3.12 Released, Linus Proposes Bug Fix-Only 4.0 274
An anonymous reader writes "Linus Torvalds announced the Linux 3.12 kernel release with a large number of improvements through many subsystems including new EXT4 file-system features, AMD Berlin APU support, a major CPUfreq governor improvement yielding impressive performance boosts for certain hardware/workloads, new drivers, and continued bug-fixing. Linus also took the opportunity to share possible plans for Linux 4.0. He's thinking of tagging Linux 4.0 following the Linux 3.19 release in about one year and is also considering the idea of Linux 4.0 being a release cycle with nothing but bug-fixes. Does Linux really need an entire two-month release cycle with nothing but bug-fixing? It's still to be decided by the kernel developers."
Bugfix Pause always welcome (Score:5, Insightful)
There have been so many fast and furious features added over the last couple releases, not only to the kernel but also the various and sundry major components (like systemd) that taking a breather isn't going to hurt anything. There is nothing huge waiting in the wings that everyone needs next week.
Take the time to fix everything you can find.
Yes, it is needed. (Score:5, Insightful)
The kernel's bug database shows almost 2500 open bugs right now.
All projects slowly accumulate those hard-to-fix bugs, or the "maybe later" bugs, or the "not interesting right now", bugs. Periodically every project needs to have that cruft cleaned up.
Spending two months fixing those bugs might be a minor annoyance to some of the kernel maintainers but would be a godsend to people who have been waiting a very long time for low priority and low interest kernel bug fixes.
Sigh (Score:0, Insightful)
I'm still pissed that Linus moved away from the traditional development model: Even number x.Y releases were stable branch and odd releases were testing/development.
Why does everyone have to jump on the stupid major release version scheme? Dumb.
If you string two half truths together (Score:0, Insightful)
you get a quarter-truth. Slap on another half-truth and you get an eighth-truth. Then make a ridiculous pronouncement that "balls are to the wall" and you're out of the truth business entirely. That's just motivational gee-gaw.
Can you name one time in the last 40 years where the operating systems market was not intensely competitive? It was always "balls to the wall" in BOLDFACE CAPS LOCK, and the same is true for hardware, database, graphics cards, etc.
Don't confuse iOS (hipster) with OSX (UNIX) (Score:5, Insightful)
iPhone's are for hipsters. OSX is certified UNIX running on rock solid, high performance hardware. Don't confuse the two.
I used Linux exclusively for fifteen years. I've contributed to many open source projects, including the Linux kernel, and I'm the maintainer of Linux::LVM and other projects. In other words, I'm a fan of Linux. From one fan of Linux to another, don't dismiss OSX just because the same company makes overpriced toys as well. It's a solid UNIX which will run all of your favorite FOSS software, and do it well.
Re:Bug fix only release could be useful (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm thinking you meant to say "Gnome", not "Gone", but I have to admit, as a typo, it makes one hell of a Freudian Slip. I won't say I wish Gnome was Gone, but I do wish the Gnome team would restore some user option control, and even extend it. Gnome has pruned a lot with version 3 and the 3.X's, and I would even think joining in the big bug fix movement should be a lesser priority than for KDE or any of the others to join in. A massively less buggy version of a still heavily restricted Gnome might say that they had no plans to ever expand user control again, for fear of reverting to an overall buggier condition. The Gnome developers jumping on the bug fix bandwagon wouldn't necessarily just be responsible coding in the way it would for, say Enlightenment or Libreoffice, it could also become a way of further burning their bridges - making it even harder for them to restore any customization features they've taken out because overall buggyness would (temporarily) go back up. At this point, Gnome 3.10 (current) seems to have expanded user control over the notifications section a bit, a welcome change in my opinion,
It could be good if lots of window managers, productivity software and even games for Linux all got interested in a coordinated bug-fixing cycle to back the kernel developers themselves, and it just might even lead to good publicity for Linux. It could be good if particular distros really focused on their installers, individual package management and such to make them as rock solid as the new base. I know that some people are going to be more eager to focus on bug fixing themselves if they know the underpinnings won't be glitching up on them as much. I'd certainly welcome the Gnome developers getting on the wagon too, but I can only hope they do it for the sake of creating a more solid but expansible product, not a more tightly locked down one.
Re:Don't confuse iOS (hipster) with OSX (UNIX) (Score:5, Insightful)
iPhone's are for hipsters. OSX is certified UNIX running on rock solid, high performance hardware. Don't confuse the two.
I used Linux exclusively for fifteen years. I've contributed to many open source projects, including the Linux kernel, and I'm the maintainer of Linux::LVM and other projects. In other words, I'm a fan of Linux. From one fan of Linux to another, don't dismiss OSX just because the same company makes overpriced toys as well. It's a solid UNIX which will run all of your favorite FOSS software, and do it well.
TBH the biggest problem I'm seeing in the wild with the latest software from Apple, Microsoft and Google is the lack of sensible exception handling.
In the old days, if something broke you got an error message telling you that something broke and giving you enough information to figure out what (hell, even if it was just "Error 2312 happened" you could at least look it up). Then they (primarilly Apple it seems, but the others are not blameless) decided that telling people what broke isn't user friendly so you got totally unhelpful "something broke" error messages with no indication as to what - many times I've have to trawl through a tcpdump capture to figure out what went wrong, and often it's that the remote server returned an error message - giving the user an easy way to see that error message would be really good!
Now, increasingly I'm seeing new software simply not producing any error messages at all - it just sits there looking like its waiting on a remote server or something when in fact it's doing nothing because the remote server threw an error back. Added to that the fact that a lot of software is now becoming an asynchronous background service means you don't even know *when* its trying and failing, all you know is it just isn't working (stuff like iCloud - all you know is that your calendars / files / whatever aren't syncing, no indication as to why or when it failed).
I get that the majority of people aren't going to *personally* find debugging information useful, but when they take it to a professional to figure out why it isn't working it would be damned helpful for the professional to be able to get at some information about what's going on - if you want to keep the error dialogue boxes tidy, just hide the debugging information in an "advanced" button.
Re:WTF, Slashdot mods... (Score:4, Insightful)
userland desktop UI development has little to nothing to do with the kernel. What do you expect the kernel devs to do to make up for gnome? Where is the kernel deficient on modern hardware? BTRFS is meant for large multi disk arrays, hardly something you see on typical user desktops.
The reason you were downmodded is because you don't know what you're talking about.
Re:Don't confuse iOS (hipster) with OSX (UNIX) (Score:4, Insightful)
I like the Windows Update ones where it gives you a hex code with the message "an unknown error has occurred". If you know enough about it to give it a code then how can it possibly be an "unknown error"? My first senior programmer would have beaten me with a deck of punchcards for doing something like that. Lazy kids today.