[Gllug] Linux 2.4.10 is out with better VM

[Bruce Richardson]

On Mon, Oct 08, 2001 at 04:16:59PM +0100, Christian Smith wrote:
> On Sat, 6 Oct 2001, Bruce Richardson wrote:
> 
> >On Sat, Oct 06, 2001 at 12:31:30AM +0100, David Irvine wrote:
> >> I'd also be interested to know if they  have vixed the VM bugs since i'm
> >> still contemplating going back to 2.2.18
> >
> >Make that 2.2.19, .18 has some issues.  Must say, 2.4.x seems to be
> >taking much longer than 2.2.x did to settle down.  The difference
> >between stable and development kernels seems to have blurred (from the
> >stability point of view, anyway).  I suppose it's a legacy of 2.4's
> >troubled gestation.
> 
> All a legacy of a VM system that was derived from the origional x86 model.
> In VM terms, Linux is where 4.3BSD was, which had a VM system based on the
> VAX, and generalised to try to make it 'portable' to other architectures.

That's the current culprit, though I was more thinking about how the 2.4
development process was hung up.  Linus prefers to work on the
development kernels and usually hands over the new stable kernel to Alan
Cox early on.  This time round, though, Alan was too busy working on 2.2
and Linus had to maintain 2.4 for longer than he liked.  To quote him:

" The problem is that I really enjoy the development process which is
why I'm always on the development kernels. I'm not really the kind of
guy whois good at maintenance. Problem is that when you're getting ready
for a new release, you have to get down into maintenance mode. I need
somebody to keep me on the straight and narrow and I didn't have
somebody to keep me on the straight and arrow because Alan Cox was busy.
It's purely a psychological one. The only real problem was that I was
allowing patches that I should not have. It's not that I can't say no.
They were good patches but Alan Cox always maintained a list of
outstanding issues so I knew whether a patch was required or not.
Without somebody keeping track of these issues, it was kind of hard for
me to say no. "

This has left 2.4 with more issues to deal with than usual.

> Is this stuff worth doing a GLLUG talk on? Would people be interested in
> the VM architecture of various OSes?

I think a lot of it was covered in a talk a while back, though I know
quite a few people didn't take it all in.

-- 
Bruce

The ice-caps are melting, tra-la-la-la.  All the world is drowning,
tra-la-la-la-la.  -- Tiny Tim.
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