> I don't want you guys to take this the wrong way, but since I
> upgraded to 2.2.11, my machine has had more attacks of "instability"
> than an old winblows 95 pentium which my mother uses to do word
> processing. I am used to the odd crash or two - it's only natural
> (personally, I *never* blame the kernel, it's always gotta be a power
> spike or alpha particle - Linux would never normally crash, it's just
> too damm good :). However, over the last couple of weeks since I
> upgraded, I have *not* upgraded any other system components (i.e.
> exactly the same environment as under 2.2.10) but have had countless
> problems. Sometimes the machine simply hangs for no apparent reason,
> processes die without explanation (logins, X, etc...) I'm used to
> Netscape crashing, but this is now at least once every 15-30 mins. gmc
> crashes once approximately every 5 mins (or after more than one or two
> file operations) and so do other file managers. Sound often fails
> completely. Machine has become more sluggish, internet connections have
> died more often than usual, mounting partitions can cause system
> crashes, and that's just the beginning. Don't even start mentioning the
> crypto stuff or anything graphical like X. :) basically what I'm saying
> is that my routine system problems have been magnified probably by an
> order of mahnitude over the last couple of weeks. I *fear* trying to run
> more than a couple of things in X because otherwise it crashes or the
> system hangs....
If you take a look at the changes, it's not too difficult to see why
the "stable" kernels are not as stable as one might like. Lots of changes
get in that are not strictly bug fixes. The most direct problem is the
one you point out: that the "stable" kernels are unstable. However, there
are other problems with a policy of back-porting new features to "stable"
kernels. It reduces the incentive to get the current development kernel
closed, thereby slowing the development cycle. I think this is a big part
of the reason why 2.2 arrived more than two years later than 2.0. In other
words, if new features were not added to "stable" kernels, then Linus
would not be under so much pressure to continue accepting patches to the
developmental kernels.
Enforcing a policy of accepting only bug fixes into the "stable" kernels
would have three effects: 1) the "stable" kernels would become more
stable, probably much more stable, 2) the pressure on Linus (and others)
would shift from keeping the development kernel going longer to getting it
closed sooner, which would shorten the development cycle (I think this
faster development cycle would result in many features getting into the
stable kernels sooner rather than later), and 3) would make Linux much
more palatable to enterprise IT departments.
People needing new features right away could either patch the stable
kernel themselves or, in the case of popular features, use Alan's ac
patches.
M Carling
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