[sclug] Not upgrading kernel to 2.6

[Derek M Jones]

Matt,

>> I installed Fedora core 2 and found the rumours that
>> is was flaky round the edges to be true.  I had enough
>> minor problems to ditch it and return to RedHat 9.
>
>Anything in particular? I've popped FC2 on a few boxen and despite a few
>niggles here and there, it works fine. Perhaps you're tickling areas I'm
>not... although these machines were finicky laptops.

Various minor niggles and since I had no major need to
move I decided to not to risk spending time sorting them out
only to keep finding more.

>> However,
>> I did take a copy of /boot and was about to give it ago when
>> I read the following:
>> 
>> http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/22/0138244&tid=106&tid=8
>> 
>> Since I prefer to get my excitement outside of kernel hacking
>> I have decided to stay away from 2.6
>
>This is why you should take heed of the advice in the article and rely
>on $DISTRO to Do The Right Thing. The Fedora Core 2 2.6.x kernel for
>example, will have extra patches either to add more functionality, or
>more commonly to add improvements to stability *without* adding extra
>functionality that can change the expected behaviour.

As various commenters pointed out, how many distributions have the
resources or interest in performing a thorough check?

The biggest kernel improvement I ever experienced was moving
from 0.9x to 1.0 (the scsi support got a lot better).  I have gone
with the flow and upgraded my Linux distribution every 12-18
months. Given that I have no compelling reason to upgrade it looks
like I might be running RedHat 9 for at least as long as I have been
running Widnows 98.


derek

--
Derek M Jones                                           tel: +44 (0) 1252 520 667
Knowledge Software Ltd                            mailto:derek at knosof.co.uk
Applications Standards Conformance Testing   http://www.knosof.co.uk