> > It's a rough job. Be thankful anyone's doing it.
>
> How, exactly, is that attitude going to help the general acceptance of
> Linux as an operating system to be taken seriously? Sure, the people
> reading this group, by and large, are the people you speak of. But
> people who aren't hackers, and who are interested in Linux as an
> operating system, don't care why there isn't a stable kernel -- they
> just care that there isn't. We've seen how easy it is to be blown off
There are plenty of reasonably stable kernels...depending on what you need
from a system and what hardware you put in it. I've got a combined 3.15
years of uptime between just 5 systems. I was at more than 4.3 years
between 7 systems, but some UDP flood attacks hosed my multi-etherport
linux router running 2.0.27, and a server running 2.0.23 plus some patches
recently had init and updated go weird at about 245 days uptime, so I
rebooted/upgraded it.
Just because the most recent kernel available isn't the most stable is not
reason to give up hope.
People not interested in working with the system and collecting kernel
patches when necessary should learn to do these things or hire someone to
do them. This is free software. You get from it what you put into it.
If you want stability handed to you on a platter, go buy a commercial unix
and/or a support contract...and be prepared to pay through the nose. SCO
apparently charges an extra couple hundred $ per incident even if you have
a support contract and are reporting bugs in their kernel. I found this
out when I accidentally crashed (kernel panic'd) a client's brand new SCO
box by cat'ing a binary file while in a telnet session. It turned out to
be a known bug in the ethernet driver...and he had to BUY the fix from
them.
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