[ale] kernel numbering

[Jonathan Rickman]

On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 22:35:00 -0500, Barry Hawkins <barry at alltc.com> wrote:

> and/or functionality for your hardware.  Plus, with the robustness of
> today's bootloaders it's not like you couldn't boot into your previous
> "sure thing" kernel if you have problems.

This seems to be the core of the problem. Apparently for you, Linux is
just a fun hobby. For others, it is a critical component of their
business...and a fun hobby. Your tolerance level for bugs is higher
because the consequences of a bad build are not as serious. Linux
started out as a research project that became a stable and trustworthy
solution. Now it appears to be turning into a research project again
at the expense of stability and trustworthiness. It's Linus' baby. He
can do with it as he wishes. But businesses will not tolerate the
nonsense that has been going on lately. The stability problems with
the newer 2.6.x kernels are very real. Companies like Red Hat, Novell,
IBM, etc have significant investments in Linux and will not hesitate
to fork the project if customers start jumping ship and they feel that
investment is in jeopardy. You could argue that Red Hat is already
well down this road as it is, what with all the selective backporting
going on. Much as I love Linux, specifically Slackware, lately I find
myself looking at my Solaris 10 machine and trying to come up with one
single reason to continue to use Linux. If Slackware goes under for
some reason, that'll probably be it for me. I've been standing on this
rug for nearly 12 years, so it upsets me a little when I feel it being
yanked out from under me.

--
Jonathan Rickman