Re: Latest Kernel?

David A Willmore (willmore@cig.mot.com)
Thu, 29 Feb 1996 16:16:16 -0600


On Feb 27, 10:05am, Warner Losh wrote:
> Subject: Re: Latest Kernel?
> : None of it's 'The Stable Release', that's to come and will be 2.0.0, but
> : will proberbly, from past experance, will stop at 2.0.10 ish ;) (1.0.9,
> : and 1.2.13 were the last stable releases from past devlopment cycles).
>
> I don't likely need to say this, but there are parts of the kernel
> (floppy driver comes to mind) that assume the next major release is
> going to be 1.4. Might not be a bad idea to do a sweep or two before
> going to 2.0.0.

Even if we never intend to do a 1.5, we should do a 1.4 even if the next step
is renaming the debugged 1.4.x 2.0. Once we think 1.3.x is stable, renaming it
to 2.0 would be a mistake. Look how many patches there are to 1.2. Sure, it
looks like only a name change, but letting a mass of people beat on it as 1.4
would be much better than developers only beating on 1.3.verylate. I,
personally, don't much care for jumping to 2.0. What's the point? If we inc
the major revision all the time it becomes meaningless. What's going to be the
signifigance of 3.0? 4.0? What does the number really mean?

For 2.0, if we do it out of sequence, I'd like to see more pervasive module
usage, PnP w/modules, the kernel graphics rework, real security permissions.
As it is, a stabilized 1.3 isn't a 2.0, it's a 1.4.

Cheers,
David