From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Tue, 18 Sep 2001 16:18:09 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Tue, 18 Sep 2001 16:17:59 -0400 Received: from ns.ithnet.com ([217.64.64.10]:8 "HELO heather.ithnet.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id ; Tue, 18 Sep 2001 16:17:54 -0400 Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 22:17:48 +0200 From: Stephan von Krawczynski To: Andreas Dilger Cc: torvalds@transmeta.com, viro@math.psu.edu, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Linux 2.4.10-pre11 Message-Id: <20010918221748.1f51f801.skraw@ithnet.com> In-Reply-To: <20010918131419.A14526@turbolinux.com> In-Reply-To: <20010918131419.A14526@turbolinux.com> Organization: ith Kommunikationstechnik GmbH X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.6.2 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, 18 Sep 2001 13:14:19 -0600 Andreas Dilger wrote: > On Sep 18, 2001 11:27 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote: > [...] > The real question is why can't we just open 2.5 and only fix the VM to > start with? Hm, I guess if anybody would be capable of _really_ fixing vm in upto-pre10 state, he would have done it already. It's not that people would not have tried, but it looks like nobody is able to get the _whole_ picture of this. Surely there are people that know a lot about certain parts of the (old) vm code, and thats exactly what leads to this Linus' statements here sounding like "I had a look at part xyz of it and it's a mess. Patch appended." (see pre10 vm patch). You have to keep in mind that a lot of people on the planet try to use 2.4 in a unbelievably broad variety of setups - and quite a number of them relies on released kernels. If you take a close look at 2.4.7, 2.4.8, 2.4.9 you may well find out, that they're unusable compared to 2.2.19. You cannot go on like this. I really do back Andrea and Linus for this step, because I can _see_ a great win in performance _and_ things got less complex in this code. So there is a much bigger chance to tilt the last remaining problems in short time (hopefully before 2.4.10 or .11). So I guess the right thing to do now is give Andrea good input of leftover, reproducible problems to give him a chance to fix them. A major discussion about "doing it all the way round" makes only sense, if someone comes up with something _at least_ as good as Andrea's code. Then its "Lonely Linus"' decision to choose. Whatever he will choose, a good percentage LKML will be against it. This is a normal thing, the guy that has to make the decision is alone most of the time. The only way for you to find out if he is right is to _try_ it. If he is, tell him. If he isn't, send a patch. He couldn't have been that wrong the last years, though. Just _one_ opinion from an unimportant guy, Stephan