<quote who="Nick Jacobs">
> Can someone explain (or supply a pointer to an
> explanation of) what is wrong with the 2.4
> kernel, that debian plans to continue offering the
> 2.2 kernel with woody?
> Several other distros have been shipping with
> 2.4 exclusively for over a year, surely most
> of the bugs have been shaken out?
its a matter of opinion..
<opinion>
I do not trust the 2.4 kernel yet. If there was something in it
that I absolutely had to have then i would use it. But only if
I could not work around the problem by getting different hardware
or trying to do the task in a different way first. 2.4.18 has
been said by many to be a good starting point(sorry i can't
provide references, ive just seen it mentioned a few times in various
places). sort of the "real" 2.4.0. I tend to agree, I have
used 2.4.18 on SusE 8(i think it uses 2.4.18) and it seems halfway
decent. but it won't make it onto any of my serious servers or
workstations. Many people(seems many on this list, or at least
many of the active posters) like to live on the edge with the 2.4 kernel,
or even 2.5 kernel, running debian unstable ..etc. I used to like
to live on the edge too, back in the 2.1.x days ..i ran slackware
i think at the time and upgraded libc manually. but now i have gotten
to the point where i just want my system to work well. I don't want
to have to debug a bad package or a kernel bug. i want to set it and
forget it(more or less). i like to spend my time on learning new
things rather then fixing old problems.
that said, I have no problem what kernel debian ships with, the
first thing i do on my systems is put in a custom kernel anyways,
so provided the kernel works long enough to boot the system and
install thats fine by me. 2.2.19 is the most solid linux kernel I have
used to date. My workstation at work which I hammer on 5 days a week
was up for more then 380 days before a 2 hour power outage killed
it(UPS only lasted for 30minutes). I have dozens of other servers
with 6-10 months of uptime. I'm sure some 2.4.x kernels do the
same, but it seemed at least until 2.4.18 that every release 2.4.x
that came out seemed to have some "serious fix"(I read kernel traffic
every week). 2.2 had this problem for
a while too. 2.2.11 was a nightmare, the memory management went
to hell and didn't recover for another 6 months at 2.2.15, then
there were some security problems in 2.2.15 and i think 2.2.17,
there is even a minor security problem with the NAT code in 2.2.19
i beleive. nothing like the 2.2.15 rootable problem though.
I think there is a significant amount of people out there like me
who like debian specifically because it is stable. The 2.4 kernel
does not offer many compelling reasons to upgrade for most systems,
which is good, that tells me linux is mature when the latest and
greatest is not required.
as for if most of the bugs are worked out..
since some people(myself included) think 2.4.18 is a starting point
for 2.4, I will give 2.4.x another 6-8 months at least before i think
about deploying it on my servers(even my personal ones).
i've told people before...I have personally used about a dozen different
linux and unix systems(more or less), on half a dozen different hardware
platforms. and for low end systems(1/2 CPU with less then 2GB ram) debian
has been the most solid and easily maintained of all of them for me.
</opinion>
nate
debian user since 2.0("hamm" ?) was released
slackware user before that
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I take it you don't have USB then. That is one of the most useful things that the 2.4.x kernels gave us, USB. I have actually got a USB Handspring Visor syncing with my Debian (Woody) 2.4.18 system. I'm working on my mp3 player. I remember being forced to dual boot just so I could sync a PDA, but now I've been Windows free for about 6 months becuase the 2.4.18 kernel has USB pretty much straightened out.
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