> There have not be many 'user important' changes..
Good point. A major version jump should signify major changes in the
kernel interface. Stability improvements, and performance improvements
don't count.
> I suggest 3.0 be released once all the below are accomplished, many of
> them already are but they need to be stable and around long enough to have
> userspace utils..
> * Ext2fs (call it ext3 perhaps) improvements:
I'm not sure this would count as revolutionary enough - I don't know how
deeply it would affect Linux, but it seems rather evolutionary.
> * An alternate FS, (can be beta)
Isn't reiserfs included yet? If it's beta, it belongs in a development
kernel (2.3), not a stable release.
> * R/W ntfs would be of use to many people.
Definitely. I've only used it RO, it worked pretty nice.
> * a set of open flags to provide the equivlient of raw devices:
Hmm...there seems to be a lot of discussion about this. I think it
might be worthy of the 3.0 version, if implemented.
> * Ethernet load balencing (I've seen stuff to do that)
Okay. The rest of the net stuff you mention also seems evolutionary, or
a matter of moving drivers from experimental.
> * GGI support (evstack!) config option.
That would be a change.
> * Either in-kernel support for enough PNP to boot a system with
> a isa pnp boot device, or a viable userspace solution (like an improved
> boot loader, initramdisks that must be rebuilt really dont cut it)
Perhaps it would be possible to unify the bootloaders (LILO, MILO,
whatnot)? LILO is kindof simplistic. Not *really* a kernel issue,
though.
> * Repair broken scsi naming (Devfs looks good so far)
That's also a major change.
> * Core Kernel Changes
> * Possibly DIPC integration, at least some of the
> clustering features that arn't WAY out there. (support
> for a daemon providing shared pid space)
Clustering might be an important addition - although I'm not sure how
much it would affect the kernel.
To sum up, you mention a lot of very good points, but a lot of them are
just things getting fixed. While that probably is more important than
adding new features, I don't think we'd want to call it 3.0 until it
provides new *functionality*.
~kzm
-- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants