Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Slightly OT but interesting nonetheless...

[Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Volker Armin Hemmann
<volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Am Dienstag 27 September 2011, 04:05:31 schrieb Grant Edwards:
>> That sounds good, but in practice it doesn't work.
>>
>>  1) The kernel developers don't support any existing customers.  Bugs
>>     are only fixed for customers who are willing to run the next
>>     kernel verison.  I've got customers that are still running 2.4
>>     kernels. 2.6.18 is still widely used.  Will the kernel developers
>>     add new features, support for new hardware, or fix bugs for those
>>     customers.  Not a chance.
>
> so what? There are long term stable kernels with no api changes. Hmm...

Except they have drivers which are buggy and require backported fixes.

>>  2) The kernel developers only make sure that drivers compile.  They
>>     don't have the hardware or knowlege required to actually test
>>     them.  One of our drivers _is_ in the kernel.  Sure, it builds,
>>     but AFAIK, it hasn't actually worked for at least 10 years.
>
> and nobody complains on lkml about it - seems that nobody uses your hardware.

Except his customers. Who are going directly to him for support.

> If something stops working (called a 'regression' btw) it has to be fixed.
> Linus is very clear about that.

That's all well and good, but it doesn't fix things that weren't
working correctly in the first place. Upstream kernel doesn't backport
fixes, that's what distros and people like Grant, for their customers.

And Linus's statement as quoted in that article (and my snippet)
doesn't include one important caveat: Sometimes, they drop support for
things that either have no maintainer, or are obsolete and difficult
to keep.

>> Trying to maintain two drivers (one in-kernel and one out-of-kernel)
>> just creates twice as much work for no gain.
>
> then don't be outside the kernel.

If we take your position, in this context, to its logical outcome, it
sounds like you're saying that distributions like Gentoo, Red Hat and
Debian shouldn't maintain older kernels with backported fixes.

There exist systems which cannot be upgraded with financial sanity;
the existing install works well enough that it would cost more to
upgrade. The reasons might be that they're using an old software
package which was abandoned, and taking ownership of the code isn't
always sane. I was actually approached by someone in my area a couple
weeks ago who was in just this kind of scenario.

-- 
:wq