Linux 2.2.0pre9 = 2.2.0 Final (Almost)

Planetes writes "Here's a post from Linus straight off linux-kernel (I only got it on my e-mail a few minutes ago) (I've attached it below. "

The following was written by Linus and posted to linux-kernel

there's now a 2.2.0-pre9 on ftp.kernel.org, and when you compile it it will call itself 2.2.0-final. The reason is fairly obvious: enough is enough, and I can't make pre-kernels forever, it just dilutes the whole idea. The only reason the tar-file is not called 2.2.0 is that I want to avoid having any embarrassing typos that cause it to not compile under reasonable configurations or something like that. Unreasonable configurations I no longer care about.

Every program has bugs, and I'm sure there are still bugs in this. Get over it - we've done our best, and nobody ever believed that there wouldn't be 2.2.x kernels to fix problems as they come up, and delaying 2.2.0 forever is not an option.

I have a wedding anniversary and a company party coming up, so I'm taking a few days off - when I get back I expect to take this current 2.2.0-final and just remove the "-final" from the Makefile, and that will be it. I suspect somebody _will_ find something embarrassing enough that I would fix it too, but let's basically avoid planning on that.

In short, before you post a bug-report about 2.2.0-final, I'd like you to have the following simple guidelines:

"Is this something Linus would be embarrassed enough about that he would wear a brown paper bag over his head for a month?"

and

"Is this something that normal people would ever really care deeply about?"

If the answer to either question is "probably not", then please consider just politely discussing it as a curiosity on the kernel mailing lists rather than even sending email about it to me: I've been too busy the last few weeks, and I'd really appreciate it if I could just forget the worries of a release for a few days..

But if you find something hilariously stupid I did, feel free to share it with me, and we'll laugh about it together (and I'll avoid wearing the brown paper bag on my head during the month of February). Do we have a deal?

I've seen people working on a 2.2.0 announcement, and I'm happy - I've been too busy to think straight, much less worry about details like that. If everything turns out ok, I'll have a few memorable bloopers in my mailbox but nothing worse than that, and I can sit down and actually read the announcement texts that people have been discussing.

ObFeatures:

• m68k sync
• various minor driver fixes (irda, net drivers, scsi, video, isdn)
• adjtimex update to the latest standards
• vfat silly buglet fix
• semaphores work on alpha again
• drop the inline strstr() that gcc got wrong whatever we did
• kswapd needed to be a bit more aggressive
• minor TCP retransmission and delack fixes

Until Monday,

Linus