Even though off-topic (as was the whole of this thread), I can't stop myself to say a few things:
1. The first, and most important: I was subscribed to lkml for a few weeks, and quickly unsubscribed. I do read every issue of Kernel Traffic (http://kt.zork.net), since issue 1 (three years ago), and recommend that to anyone interested. A few pages a week, and I have yet to find an important thing in this thread that wasn't mentioned there (with real quotes, unlike in here). 2. What do you want from Linus? Would any of you want to invest 10 years in some project, many of them as a _hobby_, and suddenly someone comes and tells you do this and do that? The fact is, he is quite good at what he is doing. That's why there is not yet any danger of another linux fork getting a large market share. I think this will only happen if (when?) big Unix vendors dump their own and move to Linux (and hopefully, will make a single server version, not like the current Linux distros that have their own sets of patches). (On a second read, I guess RH's kernel has a market share larger than Linuses, but you see my point). 3. About odd-even minors: In addition to what others have said, and to quotes from Linus (which I read on KT), as I see things, this is no different from other OSes. Almost nobody regards a first released version of any OS (or any large program, for that matter) as Enterprize-Mission-Critical-Bullet-Proof-Whatever-Ready. When you get such a release, if you are interested, you install it for testing, playing, etc. You put it on your Multi-Million- Dollar-Companys server only many months after that, when you are comfortable with it and hope that the really bad problems got fixed (and you installed and tried the fixes). Linux is the same. The only difference is that you also get all the development versions prior to release. And since those are usually very good (I personally ran 2.4.0-preXX for many months before 2.4.0 and most of them were very good). This makes people expect that the X.even.0 version will be perfect. Well, life is different. In real life, the number of people trying pre- versions is considerably smaller than those using released versions, and that makes it simply impossible to test all the different configurations and find all the bugs. Linus makes a .0 when he thinks it is ready for regular people (that is, regular Linux users, not normal sane people). Then another bunch of bugs are discovered and solved, and when it stabilizes, Linus gives it to a maintainer. This time was a bit different because of the known VM thing, which I won't talk about (but will only remind that it was a known issue well before 2.4.0 - read KT issues around Jun 2000 - issues 70-80). Conclusion: 4. In short - if you want to use Linux for an important server, count from the maintainers' first version. I will personally trust very much 2.4.18 or .19 (at home I still use 2.4.7-linus). Proof: Alan got 2.2 around 2.2.12 (can't find for sure, but latest 2.2-ac was 11), and 2.2.14 was a great kernel (proof: 2.2.15 was 4 months later - the biggest interval between 2.2.x versions until between 19 and 20). (and BTW - 2.2.14 was almost exactly a year after 2.2.0, and the 'stable' 2.4 will hopefully be 1.1-1.3 years after 2.4.0 - not that bad, despite the VM fiasco). Just my 2 agorot, and excuse the long and boring mail (I couldn't resist), and to make it a bit on-topic, Uri's last name (from Compaq) is Leibovitch (Thanks for the lecture organization, Uri! , although I guess you do not read this. Maybe someone at Compaq will forward), Didi ================================================================= 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]
