Re: Thanks

[Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>]

On Tue, Apr 02, 2002 at 11:02:42AM -0600, KoReE wrote:
> heh.  I'm not a new user, and I'm stuck on 2.2 because I'm afraid to
> totally screw my system.  I've got instructions on which packages need to
> be updated to go to 2.4, but it's still scary for a production system.
> However, I want some of the features.  Vicious cycle.

If you are running a modern distribution, the upgrade should be mostly
painless, and you get fun new features like ext3...

> While I agree with Steve's statement about it not being a good idea for a
> new user, I really think it's important to know how to compile a kernel.

It's a good thing to know, but I honestly don't consider it very
important these days.  The distributions tend to use patched kernel
sources that include features that aren't included in the stock kernel
sources for various (totally valid) reasons.  As an example, 2.2.x
still includes ancient software RAID code because the newer RAID code
is somewhat incompatible.  Making changes like that is supposed to be
unacceptable in a stable kernel tree.  It's a perfectly valid thing
for the distributions to make incompatible changes like that when they
take care of the upgrade path (through dependencies in the kernel and
tools, for example).

If the distribution vendors are doing their jobs right, they are also
stress-testing the particular kernels that they ship to guarantee
stability.  The same can't be said of Linus, Alan, Marcelo, etc.  They
do a release, *then* it really gets tested.  (Sure, *some* people try
the pre-patches and such, but most of the testing gets done by
end-users after a final release.)

Besides, with everything modularized or proc-tunable, a generic kernel
should work for just about everybody.

Steve
-- 
steve@silug.org           | Southern Illinois Linux Users Group
(618)398-7360             | See web site for meeting details.
Steven Pritchard          | http://www.silug.org/

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