[Gllug] caldera calls out.

[Bruce Richardson]

On 8/23/01, 12:19:34 PM, Simon Trimmer <simon at urbanmyth.org> wrote 
regarding Re: [Gllug] caldera calls out.:


> The difference between Sun making a release and a new version of the 
linux
> kernel is that Sun have run the kernel through a QA procedure, there is 
some
> implied level of stability rather than having to wait for a few hours 
looking
> for "kernel version X.X.X ate my root disk".

That *is* the QA procedure.  That's the whole point of "release early, 
release often".  If you download the latest kernel sources then you are 
enrolling youself as a tester.  You run it till it breaks and then you 
tell them how it broke.

The difference between Free Software and (say) MS is that you are 
explicitly told that the software has bugs (and given a detailed list of 
what they are).

Away from the kernel level, Linux development is more stable than most 
proprietary development, not less.  Because development is modular, 
incremental and concurrent (and frequently being ported across multiple 
OSs), interfaces tend to remain consistent, adding features but not 
randomly discarding or changing old ones.  To pick a crude example, you 
don't upgrade your kernel and find that your window manager has changed.

-- 

Bruce

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