Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 16:07:37 +0200 From: Giorgos Keramidas <charon@labs.gr> To: Bzdik BSD <bzdik@yahoo.com>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Linux VM : forky? Message-ID: <20011030160736.B41047@hades.hell.gr> In-Reply-To: <20011030102804.B60885@lpt.ens.fr> References: <20011030012025.49292.qmail@web13605.mail.yahoo.com> <20011030051923.A36388@hades.hell.gr> <20011030102804.B60885@lpt.ens.fr>
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On Tue, Oct 30, 2001 at 10:28:04AM +0100, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > Giorgos Keramidas said on Oct 30, 2001 at 05:19:23: > > On Mon, Oct 29, 2001 at 05:20:25PM -0800, Bzdik BSD wrote: > > > > > > http://www.byte.com/documents/s=1436/byt20011024s0002/1029_moshe.html > > > > Spreading FUD? :P > > > > Linux has not forked when other debates ragged for long either. > > It is very unlikely it will now. > > One could argue that linux has forked many times. Presently, Linus > does one set of releases, while Alan Cox does another (which are > supposed to be more "bleeding edge" but many apparently prefer to run > those). Several others maintain their own trees too. In addition, > every distributor releases a customised kernel which is not a > "vanilla" Linus kernel at all. And ports to other architecture > (PowerPC, etc) tend to diverge a lot from Linus's tree. It looks to > me like Linus remains a sort of focal point, and while all the various > forks try to stay somewhat in sync with him and will not want to > diverge too far, I think they are forks nonetheless, by any > definition. With a rather broad definition of a fork, yes, one can argue that ports to other architectures, and -ac patches have always been exactly that, `forks'. Having Linus as a focal point though makes things a tiny bit more likely that efforts which diverge for a while will eventually merge with the `official' Linux tree later on. > In particular, the current VM situation looks like a fork, in effect, > already. Whether there will be a re-merging remains to be seen... This is, I'm afraid the only way to actually test, debug, develop and benchmark new changes and ideas with Linux. It is true that in the old days, a release with an even middle number was considered something like FreeBSD's -STABLE, and only in 2.5.x changes would be accepted that make large or radical changes, sweeping over the Linux code tree. It is also true that this thin red line, separating stable from experimental releases has grown a bit thiner during the last few years. We can only wait and see what happens. When Archangeli's VM or Rik van Riel's VM or some other new VM implementation, yet to come, is finally chosen as `The Linux VM' and things settle down, what now seems like a fork will be history :) > [a conflict among kernel patches] was possible even 2 years ago, > which was the last time I played with linux kernel patches etc > (since then I've stuck with FreeBSD like a good boy), but has > apparently become a lot worse now. Of course you do understand that patching the kernel, and making it different than the one which has been tested with the particular release, is something akin to kernel hacking, since you are no longer using the `official' kernel of your distribution. If bad things happen with a kernel like this, but not with the kernel your distribution's latest release came with, you can't blame Linux :P -giorgos To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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