On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 03:45:26PM -0500, William Hooper wrote: > > Red Hat 9.0? What happened to 8.1? > > Binary compatibility. RH always goes to x.0 when they don't preserve > binary compatibility. Now you know why some people (like me) think it was > silly to be calling it RH 8.1 beta in the newsgroups.
In the past, this was indeed the case. Red Hat Linux 9's incorporation of NPTL does mean that certain applications that function on older versions of Red Hat Linux (like 8.0) will not work without intervention on Red Hat Linux 9. For example, some Java JVMs do not work properly because they make certain assumptions about the thread model that are no longer true. Most of these applications can still be used by specifying that you wish the older thread libraries to be used through LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1 and LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5. But there's something a bit more fundamental that I want people to be aware of. In the past we would never have tackled something as massive and invasive as a new threads implementation just after a ".0" release (in this case, 8.0). We were able to do this, and bring this great new technology to a mass audience, because we've changed the way we consider technology to incorporate in Red Hat Linux. In the past we would have felt it necessary to wait a while for a ".0" release because we had to support a series of releases for years. With the introduction of the full family of Red Hat Enterprise Linux product we now have the flexibility to incorporate the best technology that both the Open Source communities and Red Hat have to offer when they're ready, instead of having to hold back. One example of this sort of thing that caused a lot of negative feedback in the past was the delayed incorporation of Python 2.0 in the Red Hat Linux 7.x series. In the new model we would be able to get the new releases of major subsystems like Python in the distribution as soon as they have been proven stable. I hope this sheds a little light on "why 9 and not 8.1". Cheers, Matt [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Matt Wilson Manager, Base Operating Systems Red Hat, Inc. -- Phoebe-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/phoebe-list
