> > I have to disagree. I remember 1.0.0, 1.2.0, 2.0.0, and 2.2.0 -- *all* > > of them had their share of nay-sayers. > > And I have to disagree with you. I've generally found that if you > want your system to actually work well and reliably, you'll want to > wait until at least the point where Linus has passed the kernel on to > the "stable" maintainer. Even then, you can have problems. The 2.2 > series didn't really solidify until 2.2.18, which had a security > problem which caused 2.2.19 to be released soon after. Unfortunately, > the "fix" didn't, and 2.2.20 was eventually released to finally > (hopefully) fix the hole.
I wasn't arguing that "dot-oh" releases were stable. I *was* arguing that there's always been a crowd who hearkens for "yesteryear," and wants the current major rev. thrown in the garbage. > > specs. When it came to SCSI, my mantra used to be "There is no > > adapter but Adaptec, and I am their prophet", but this has, alas, > > changed... and it's not 2.4's fault if Adaptec's made this happen. > > I'm familiar with the arguments, and they make some sense. As for > whether or not it's the kernel developer's fault the Adaptec drivers > don't work: No, but it doesn't much matter either if you have Adaptec > hardware, does it? If it don't work, it don't work. Plain and > simple. Indeed. But this has held true for ages. Go read the 1.x ethernet notes on the 3c501 ethernet card, where the NIC code author, *in writing*, offers $5 for each 3c501 sent to him, and thus taken off the market. (He was willing to accept the PROMs off the board, just in case anyone thought he was in the second-hand NIC market.) Sometimes buggy stuff gets out -- either hardware or software. And, sometimes, the answer is: tough luck. Ask me how I felt when XFree86 4.0 dropped support for my spiffy SGI flatpanel digital display video card... and how amazingly happy I was when it returned with 4.1. By which point I'd already spent $500 for an amazingly unsatisfactory analog solution. > > As for other issues with 2.4 -- they're getting worked on. After > > the fiasco that was 2.4.15, I think they're pretty much to the point > > where it's a usable, production-ready kernel. > > Maybe... but would you bet your company's life on it? Oh, come, come: now we're devolving into histrionics. You're beginning to sound like an MS FUD-meister. As *always*, with *any* OS, you try as best you can to understand the risks, and how it would impact your company were something bad to happen, and work with it. I *have* been running my company on 2.4 code, with (almost) no glitches. (In early 2.4 series stuff, I found eepro100 virtual interfaces to disappear after some five or so hours. Annoying.) Would I want to run a life-support system on it? Well, no, probably not. But truth be told, I'm not sure what I *would* want to run a life-support system on. I am, however, reasonably confident in the fact that, were one of the systems to have a kernel panic, thanks to the joy that is journaling filesystems, I would have about a three-minute downtime, and no corrupted data. So far, though, I've only had one system pull a kernel panic on me: a 2.2 system, three times, before I ironed out the ReiserFS bug... that, yes, had already been banished from the 2.4-series kernels (it was a max filesize-related issue). Like security, stability is an ongoing process -- if I may borrow from those stupid posters, it's "a journey, not a destination." And please note that I'm *not* defending 2.4's track record, per-se, but rather the fact that for the vast majority of users, it's likely to be pretty much as stable as 2.2... and, perhaps in some cases (*gasp*) moreso. And let's not forget -- 2.4 has some pretty nifty features, to boot. So, if you want a fairly mature kernel, with the majority of glitches dispatched, 2.2.x is probably your baby. If you want a kernel that takes better advantage of multi-processor hardware, larger filesizes, in-kernel HTTP server of static pages, blah, blah, blah, but a somewhat flakier VM, etc., etc., etc., then 2.4 is a more likely choice. So long as your choice is an informed one, and takes your company's needs into account, it's probably the "right" choice -- despite the lack of absolutes. $2*10^-2 -Ken ***************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *****************************************************************
