On Fri, Jan 28, 2005 at 04:39:06PM -0800, Alan wrote: > Sarge > >hasn't been released yet, and Debian stable uses a 2.2 kernel still. > > As much as I hate "distribution wars": > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ cat /etc/debian_version > 3.0 > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ apt-cache search kernel-image > kernel-image-2.2.20 - Linux kernel binary image for version 2.2.20. > kernel-image-2.2.20-compact - Linux kernel binary image. > kernel-image-2.2.20-idepci - Linux kernel binary image. > ... > kernel-image-2.4.18-1-386 - Linux kernel image for version 2.4.18 on386. > kernel-image-2.4.18-1-586tsc - Linux kernel image for version 2.4.18 > kernel-image-2.4.18-1-686 - Linux kernel image 2.4.18 on > kernel-image-2.4.18-1-686-smp - Linux kernel image 2.4.18 on > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ > > While it's true that 2.2 is the default kernel(is this still the case? I > know you can use 'bf24' to boot directly into a 2.4 kernel),changing to > a 2.4 kernel is as easy as an apt-get. > > This is _no_ different than updating your kernel on a RedHat box, or > even downloading the source and compiling your own.
Question for you: I just built a machine for $300. Can YOU install Debian stable on it? (The answer is no.) I built a machine before Woody was even released. Could you install Debian on it? No, not even with 2.4.18. You needed 2.4.19pre1's IDE patch to make it work. And Debian still doesn't have that IDE patch, three years later. You can't run Debian stable on any machine with an ATA100 or ATA133 chipset. What Debian needs to do is rename "stable" to "decrepit". At the time woody was released, ATA100 was standard and 133 was the latest thing. I protested more than a month before it was released that Debian needed to have this patch, and the Debian kernel maintainer told me that he would not incorporate an "experimental" patch because it wasn't a security fix and because if it wasn't good enough for Linus, it wasn't good enough for him. Of course, in the grand fuckup that is Debian politics, nobody is in a position to tell this developer to pull his head out of wherever he'd managed to insert it and look at both the current state of the hardware and of the maturity of the IDE patch. On top of all of that, at the time, the Debian people said they were rewriting their installer and it would be about a year before it was ready for its first real test. In that time, people with new machines could not install Debian at all, and after it only if they went after the experimental new sarge installer for another 6-8 months. Them's the breaks, say Debian. This reminds me of a tale I heard about NetBSD. (Details may be wrong because it was a long time ago and I wasn't personally involved.) Back then, ISA SCSI cards were used and there was a problem with using some of these on DEC Alpha systems with > 16 megs of memory. For some ridiculous amount of time (longer than a few weeks), NetBSD did not support > 16MB on any system, regardless of its CPU architecture, because those damned Alphas couldn't handle it. In labour relations, there is this passive-aggressive way to go on strike without actually doing so called work to rule. I bring it up because I ran into someone who had actually never heard of this kind of thing before. The basic idea is that most companies (or large community projects) have a significant amount of policy and process in place. So much, in fact, that in order to get anything accomplished in a reasonable timeframe, most of the policy gets ignored. In a work to rule scenario, workers follow every single policy to the letter, realizing that they are technically still doing their jobs, but that by using the existing policies they can bring work to a near standstill. My first experience with this kind of thing was a Debian developer applying the principle, but that's a long story I won't go into. I will point out, however, that this demonstrates how policies can sometimes get in the way of doing what needs to be done. Okay, Debian stable has a policy that no new software goes in. Period. If there is a need for a backport of a security patch, it is backported. There are times (required boot drivers!) when this doesn't make sense, but the powers that be insist that the policy must be followed to the letter. Consider that. _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list euglug@euglug.org http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug