Messages in this thread | | | From | (Zygo Blaxell) | Subject | Re: *sigh* Please give me something... | Date | 5 Mar 1999 19:35:02 -0500 |
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In article <m10Igzg-0007U2C@the-village.bc.nu>, Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote: >2.2.0 is stable, for most people. For example the only crashes on my >2.2.x boxes have been either new stuff I was trying at the time or repeating >someone elses recipe. Is the box stable with 2.0.36 ?
Your Mileage May Vary.
I have two machines sitting side by side on my desk. One is a P133 web server which ran 2.2.0-pre6 basically from a few minutes after it was released until last Tuesday with no hitches whatsoever; in fact, for the previous ten months it has been running various 2.1.xxx releases with only two minor problems that were both tied to specific kernel revisions and fixed in before I had a chance to report the problems. The other is a PII-300 desktop multimedia machine which has been wildly unstable (rarely more than 18 hours between crashes) on all of the 2.1.x and 2.2.x kernels. The latter machine is now setting an uptime record for the 2.2.x series at 3 days, 20:58 on kernel 2.2.2.
The kernel configuration in both cases is identical; I compiled on one machine and copied the binaries to the other. If I'm getting results this different on hardware that has many months if not years of history running Linux reliably, then I would expect to see even greater differences with less mainstream hardware. And I do.
I still haven't managed to compile a 2.2.x kernel for an Alpha (although I make few attempts at that and they are far between), so I don't know how well that works yet.
Later 2.2.x kernels will of course work for more and more people, but the early 2.2.x kernels are really only a week or two different from the late 2.1.x kernels. "Normal" users who rely on hard stability should wait until a real Linux vendor sorts out the bugs and shrink-wraps the kernel into a nice well-tested package for them. Everyone else will be busily banging on the 2.2.x until then.
-- Zygo Blaxell, Linux Engineer, Corel Corporation, zygob@corel.ca (work), zblaxell@furryterror.org (play). It's my opinion, I tell you! Mine! All MINE! Linux naga 2.0.36 #1 Dec 29 13:11 EST 1998 up 8 days, 5:23 Linux hysterical 2.0.35 #1 Aug 9 17:26 EDT 1998 i486 up 10 days, 9:58
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