On Wed, Oct 27, 2004 at 12:05:19PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 01:00:52PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote: > > Which is why you should be running 2.6 kernels on your powerpc box. The 2.4 > > kernels are largely abandoned by upstream powerpc developers, and are not > > the > > default on powerpc in debian anymore. Especially for largely uncommon > > situations like highmem and smp kernels, the latest 2.6 kernels are your > > safest bet. > > If we're discontining support for 2.4.x kernels on PowerPC, then we should > stop shipping packages for them.
Well, the default kernel for powerpc on sarge will be 2.6.8. 2.4 is still kept for people who may need it, and for some exotic configuration (think oldworld machines, or prep with limited initrd size). For pmac hardware, 2.6 will always be a better kernel. Debian-installer will also install a 2.6 kernel on powerpc per default, so all new installs should have the 2.6 kernels. > Otherwise, support them. Sure. but it is not the recomended thing to do. Same as you still ship X 3.3 (you still do, right ?), but if i ask you to run my nice Radeon 9800 on it, you will probably suggest lots of un-nice things to me :) Seriously, i have neither the hardware nor the knowledge to handle the 2.4 + SMP + highmem case, and since upstream isn't really active on this anymore, your patches are welcome. Consider that the 2.4 -benh tree has not been updated since february or so last i checked, and that we are in fact maintaining a forked version of it, i don't think it makes much sense to over-burden ourselves in cases that would be much better supported by 2.6 anyway. > Moreover, I doubt highmem+SMP configurations are all that rare, > particularly on recent hardware. Recent hardware means probably G5 machines, and in that case you _SHOULD_ be using the 2.6 kernels. Debian-installer has already dropped 2.4 installers for both power3 and power4/g5 based kernels. And know that i got to all the effort of making the 2.4.26 and 2.4.27 powerpc package mostly only for your benefit. Friendly, Sven Luther
