On Thu, Sep 26, 2002, Mark Veltzer wrote about "Re: linux 2.4.20-pre?-ac? kernels": > 10. What (9) means is that RH kernels will be more stable than vanilla > kernels only if: > a. RH don't do a lot of changes. > b. the changes are not of great depth. > c. the fixes are obvious. > d. most of the fixes are for drivers. > If this is the case then indeed RH kernels could be better than vanilla. But > what these conditions actually mean is that RH is NOT FAR from vanilla. This > probably means that the vanilla version is pretty good as well!!! Funny how > life is...
There's one issue you forgot: there have been dozens and dozens of "vanilla" kernel releases in the 2.4 series (for example). 2.4.0 through 2.4.19, various sorts of -aa, -ac, and other sorts of big patches meant to solve various problems in those various official versions. If you read the linux- kernel mailing list (watch out, hundreds of posts per day) you'll see all those various versions being announced, and some of them later denounced. Now, which is better, taking some Redhat kernel that came, say, with Redhat 7.2 (or one of its updates), or randomly selecting the latest kernel at that time, say 2.4.13? Well, the truth is that many of the 2.4.* early kerels were duds, with serious problems (e.g., filesystem corruption, serious VM issues under high load, etc.); Redhat had to choose the more stable of the bunch to ship to their customers. Even if they didn't include any extra fixes in their kernels, the mere fact that they tried to make sure that they are shipping the more-stable kernels of the series was important. At least for people that don't have the resources to check a dozen kernels to see which one fairs best on a very specific type of high load - in other words, most of the members of this list. Anyway, as Ariel later explained, he *is* trying to see which kernel fairs best for a specific workload - in which case he is probably right, Redhat's checking and patching might not be at all relevant to his needs, because he might be able to do it better for his very specific needs. -- Nadav Har'El | Thursday, Sep 26 2002, 21 Tishri 5763 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |----------------------------------------- Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |From the Linux getopt(3) manpage: "BUGS: http://nadav.harel.org.il |This manpage is confusing." ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
