Re: [Sheflug] RAID and kernel upgrading.

[Will Newton <nospam [at] misconception.org.uk>]

On Thu, 8 Jun 2000, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> Not the Sparc ELC I happen to have.  Unless you call oopsing before
> starting /sbin/init "support."  If Red Hat pays people to work on

Did you report the oops on l-k?

> Sparcs, and gives them deadlines and puts priority on the ARCHs that
> big commercial users have lots of, what do you think happens to older,
> or less common, ARCHs?

Exactly what happened before commercialisation. Volunteer support.

> Exactly what happens to those ARCHs, apps, etc that MSFT doesn't
> support.

If there's no money in it then it won't be supported by RedHat, SuSE,
Mandrake, Turbo, Corel etc. But it doesn't stop other people doing it.
If you have a machine you want Linux on the least you can do is help the
kernel team to support it.

> resulted in a move to Debian as Slackware didn't cut it.  No way have
> I "grown out of" Red Hat.  Red Hat has never grown into my needs,
> certainly not enough to justify switching from Debian.

Maybe so, but many people have. They have become something of an easy
target, but IMO they try just as hard as everyone else, and I never found
a distro I had no complaints with anyway.
 
> But (this time) my complaints don't have anything to do with whether
> Red Hat is a good distro or not; they have to do with Red Hat being
> the biggest of the commercial distros, and therefore the ones
> redirecting developer resources toward competing with Windows 9x and
> NT, 'cause that's where the money is.

Money is in competition? Sounds a little dubious. Obviously Intel is the
priority, most developers have an Intel machine. It's as simple as that.

> Or, to take a more reasonable position.  If I write an email to Alan
> Cox about my Sparc[1], and Bob Young walks into his office with a request
> to support a VA Linux Sparc/SMP initiative, which do you think is
> going to get priority?

The guy who pays his wages obviously. But it isn't as if Alan Cox is the
only man alive who can help you.

> Their complaints about the code are mostly that the modularization is
> getting broken more frequently in the name of "features" and
> "efficiency," and that much of the kernel code they need to understand
> to debug their own projects is poorly designed, unreadable and
> unmaintainable.  And getting worse.

It's easy to generalize. Less easy to pinpoint problems so they can be
fixed.
 
> Allegedly the BSD kernels are going in exactly the opposite
> direction.  I'm definitely planning to change my Sparc over to NetBSD
> for these reasons.

The code quality in BSD does seem to be of a higher standard, but I would
guess that has always been the case. (Organized academic development
vs. disorganized part-timers)

> Exactly my point.  Except that I noticed both the "very alpha"
> behavior and the "pre-*" version tags.  Doesn't that bother you?  It
> certainly would if it were a Microsoft product!

They ARE NOT general releases. They are available to use at your own risk.
 
> None of those options are on in my Sparc .config, and therefore have
> should have squat to do with kernels that oops before starting
> /sbin/init.  One suspects that what is happening is that people are

There has to be a lot of changes to support stuff like hot plug for USB
and to modularize code to make efficient reuse across those subsystems.

> putting in "exciting features" or "bug fixes" and breaking working
> code.  Alan and Linus cannot check all the platforms now "supported"
> by Linux.

I agree with that on some things (e.g. devfs).

> Uh-huh.  What really is going on is that the "whingers" are working on
> _other_ subsystems (like XFree86 and XEmacs), and would just like to
> have a stable platform that boots for their hardware, subsystems, and
> apps.

I think the jury is still out on the 2.4.0 stability issue. I think going
to 2.3.99pre was a mistake so early, and 2.4.0test is even crazier, but if
when 2.4.1 is released it is stable I will be happy. I only have x86
hardware, so there's no way I can say if it works on some other esoteric
kit.
 
> [1]  No, I haven't filed a bug report; others have---Sparc ELC support
> has been non-existent for a couple of years.

Sounds like an interesting project for someone with a Sparc ELC to me...


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