[RFC] make it easy to test new kernels

[jerome lacoste <jerome.lacoste@gmail.com>]

Hi,

Linux user from a long time, I feel that I am not doing enough to help
Linux improve. In particular, I would like to test new Linux kernels
more often.

Unfortunately, as time pass buy, I have less and less time to play
with setting up my machines. I cannot spend time compiling and booting
a kernel for every machine I have access to, nor take the risk to
crash a machine I depend upon.

So although I have access to 5-10 machines easily, I end up testing
kernels on 2 machines only, 5-6 times per year per machine (i.e. for
each kernel release). The other machines for their distro specific
kernel upgrades (or test a live distro)...

The only machine I can play with daily is my desktop. But as a
developer, it takes me several minutes to go from a cold boot to a
desktop suitable for my work. I usually have many graphical
applications (browser, IDE, plenty of shells, IM tools), servers
(database, web server, ...). So I usually don't reboot my desktop for
weeks. (I really hope that software suspend will finally help me to
speed this up someday.)

I could compile a new kernel everyday. It's not too hard a process to
automate. But today, I cannot take the cost and risk of rebooting my
machine. It just takes too much time.

Now I am wondering if there's a way to solve this. How can we make the
testing of new kernels easier?

A kernel.org live distro with integrated issue reporting could be an
idea, but it wouldn't show particular desktop application breakage.
And I see a Gnome/KDE/XFCE flame war ready to start...

Now, will all these talks about virtualization, I wonder if it will be
possible one day to just download a new virtualized test OS and test
it without rebooting the main one. I could always allocate 10 G to a
test system on my disk. As long as I don't have to reboot.

But maybe I am focusing on the wrong approach?
Linux developers, what would be the thing that takes no more than 4-5
min per day that people like me could do with our machines to help you
improve Linux?

Jerome