Kernel Modules in Fedora -x

Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com
Mon Aug 6 17:09:26 UTC 2007


Chris Brown wrote:
> On 05/08/07, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>> Les Mikesell wrote:
>>
>>> That sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. It's not really the business of
>>> an OS to own and restrict everything that touches it, whether on the
>>> driver or application interfaces. Attempting that will limit what users
>>> can do with it.  Would you, for example, put all of your critical data
>>> on a firewire drive while you upgrade through the kernels used from FC5
>>> to current?
>> I assume you know very well that discussing this here isn't going to
>> change how the upstream kernel works. Either go to LKML and see if you
>> can convince anyone with your arguments or drop it.
> 
> Can I take it by that statement you mean that the Fedora project has
> no influence over the state of the upstream kernel? That would be a
> pretty sad state of affairs, given the size and influence of the
> project's main contributor.
> 
> As the person who started this whole argument by querying kqemu's
> inclusion (or lack thereof) into the kernel, I can also state I
> started this here rather than on the LKML because:

And I added my comments because RHEL demonstrates that a distribution 
does not have to pass upstream breakage directly to users, and the 
centosplus kernel shows that it can be pretty solid even if you leave in 
the parts that RHEL removes.

> -There is more chance of me getting an answer here
> -I do not subscribe to LKML and do not wish to in order to ask one question
> -I prefer the ... how shall I put this .. ambience.. of the fedora-devel to LKML

I don't see much hope for changes in kernel development unless/until 
someone puts together a really nice distribution around opensolaris so 
there is some other choice, but there is plenty of competition now at 
the linux distribution level and fedora has a somewhat-deserved 
reputation for breaking things with updates in the middle of a version 
cycle.  Since fedora already has a very fast version turnover, why can't 
  kernel updates be held back to security patches within a version or 
made 'opt-in' in the updater so users with working systems don't have 
unpleasant surprises?

> I think this is also a good forum to debate things in before poking a
> nose in LKML, to also glean information as to varying modules and
> their progression towards inclusion - yes I remain the eternal
> optimist.
> 
> It is also sad to see you are yet again ordering people about on a
> public mailing list. If you are not interested in the discussion, you
> do not need to read or reply to it, the latter being an option I would
> personally prefer.

The discussion I'd like to see is to what extent stability matters and 
whether users that need it should just look for some other distro that 
includes firefox 2.x (etc.) but isn't so aggressive with kernel changes?

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com




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