6 ms·

For those wondering what's new: “So what are the big changes? NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. Sure, we have the usual two thirds driver changes, and a lot of ran

by riobard 15y ago

For those wondering what's new: “So what are the big changes? NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. Sure, we have the usual two thirds driver changes, and a lot of random fixes, but the point is that 3.0 is just about renumbering, we are very much not doing a KDE-4 or a Gnome-3 here. No breakage, no special scary new features, nothing at all like that. We've been doing time-based releases for many years now, this is in no way about features. If you want an excuse for the renumbering, you really should look at the time-based one ("20 years") instead.” by Linus Torvalds source: ttp://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1147415

spicyj 15y ago
Source: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1147415 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1147415
hasenj 15y ago
I didn't know you were quoting Linus, you should make it more obvious.
- riobard 15y ago
  added the name :)
  - BasDirks 15y ago
    That's a start, but people only read that name after they've read the quote. Helpful conventions for quotes are: "quotes" - Linus Torvalds quotes - Linus Torvalds
    - fredoliveira 15y ago
      I think you'll agree with me when I say that people only read the name after they've read the quote in your examples too.
      - AntiRush 15y ago
        When I see something in "quotes" or quotes, I usually look to the end to see the attribution before reading it.
- hasenj 15y ago
  It's funny and upsetting how I get more upvotes for comments like these than for things I actually put some thought into.
  - wladimir 15y ago
    I've noticed the same. Most of my posts that have been massively upvoted were suggestions or small corrections. The posts in which I take time to explain something non-trivial generally end up with 2-3 votes at most. Amount of karma is not a measure of interestingness of the contribution, it's used mainly as an 'agree' button.
    - johnyzee 15y ago
      This is almost certainly caused by the decision to hide comment score. If people could see that this kind of comment (f.ex. a small correction) already had its fair share of upvotes they would leave it at that, but as it is now everybody who sees it upvotes it.
      - dchest 15y ago
        What's the difference? Are we running out of upvotes?
        gjm11 15y ago
        1. If, now or in the future, the HN comment-ordering algorithm pays attention to children's scores, then you get the following pathology: A says something slightly wrong, B makes a small correction, B's comment gets massively upvoted because everyone upvotes it, so that subthread gets treated as highly-scored even though there's nothing terribly insightful or interesting about it. (You could, but probably wouldn't, get the following even worse follow-on pathology: people start putting mistakes into their comments so that this will happen and they'll get extra visibility.) 2. People get more karma for posting minor corrections than for posting substantive comments. That's arguably unfair, and again it has a possible follow-on pathology: making nitpicking more popular and carefully thought-out insightful comments less popular.
kia 15y ago
It would break many of the programs which rely on 2.6.x naming scheme. Linus always was on the side of not breaking things if they do work. It seems that he changed his views for this particular case.
- fragsworth 15y ago
  He's also a huge proponent of "Don't be stupid". I think that applies to developers who did what you mentioned.
  - angusgr 15y ago
    I don't know if that's fair. I mean, if you have a program that needs to parse out the Linux kernel version then you could very plausibly have assumed the format vX.X.X[-something|.X], given it's been that way consistently for 15 years (since 2.1.0 in '96). Even the kernel's own scripts do that, as Linus mentions in the email. Now it's going to have format vX.X for the first time since 2.0. I can't actually think of the use case for needing to parse the complete version string outside the kernel, but it doesn't sound stupid to me that you'd assume a canonical format that's been there for a decade and a half. Apparently wrong, and decidedly unimportant & bikesheddy, but not necessarily stupid.
    - mikemaccana 15y ago
      Kia specifically mentioned '2.6.x' naming. Obviously expecting three parts is AOK, expecting the kernel to remain at 2.6 forever is not.
      - angusgr 15y ago
        Well he said the '2.6.x naming scheme', which I took to mean the 3 part versioning scheme (as used in 2.6 kernel versions.) I agree with you that assuming the kernel would always be 2.6.x is not OK, I'd just assumed noone would be that shortsighted and stupid. :)
- adambyrtek 15y ago

by riobard 15y ago

spicyj 15y ago

Source: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1147415 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1147415

hasenj 15y ago

I didn't know you were quoting Linus, you should make it more obvious.

riobard 15y ago
added the name :)
- BasDirks 15y ago
  That's a start, but people only read that name after they've read the quote. Helpful conventions for quotes are: "quotes" - Linus Torvalds quotes - Linus Torvalds
  - fredoliveira 15y ago
    I think you'll agree with me when I say that people only read the name after they've read the quote in your examples too.
    - AntiRush 15y ago
      When I see something in "quotes" or quotes, I usually look to the end to see the attribution before reading it.
hasenj 15y ago
It's funny and upsetting how I get more upvotes for comments like these than for things I actually put some thought into.
- wladimir 15y ago
  I've noticed the same. Most of my posts that have been massively upvoted were suggestions or small corrections. The posts in which I take time to explain something non-trivial generally end up with 2-3 votes at most. Amount of karma is not a measure of interestingness of the contribution, it's used mainly as an 'agree' button.
  - johnyzee 15y ago
    This is almost certainly caused by the decision to hide comment score. If people could see that this kind of comment (f.ex. a small correction) already had its fair share of upvotes they would leave it at that, but as it is now everybody who sees it upvotes it.
    - dchest 15y ago
      What's the difference? Are we running out of upvotes?
      - gjm11 15y ago
        1. If, now or in the future, the HN comment-ordering algorithm pays attention to children's scores, then you get the following pathology: A says something slightly wrong, B makes a small correction, B's comment gets massively upvoted because everyone upvotes it, so that subthread gets treated as highly-scored even though there's nothing terribly insightful or interesting about it. (You could, but probably wouldn't, get the following even worse follow-on pathology: people start putting mistakes into their comments so that this will happen and they'll get extra visibility.) 2. People get more karma for posting minor corrections than for posting substantive comments. That's arguably unfair, and again it has a possible follow-on pathology: making nitpicking more popular and carefully thought-out insightful comments less popular.

kia 15y ago

It would break many of the programs which rely on 2.6.x naming scheme. Linus always was on the side of not breaking things if they do work. It seems that he changed his views for this particular case.

fragsworth 15y ago
He's also a huge proponent of "Don't be stupid". I think that applies to developers who did what you mentioned.
- angusgr 15y ago
  I don't know if that's fair. I mean, if you have a program that needs to parse out the Linux kernel version then you could very plausibly have assumed the format vX.X.X[-something|.X], given it's been that way consistently for 15 years (since 2.1.0 in '96). Even the kernel's own scripts do that, as Linus mentions in the email. Now it's going to have format vX.X for the first time since 2.0. I can't actually think of the use case for needing to parse the complete version string outside the kernel, but it doesn't sound stupid to me that you'd assume a canonical format that's been there for a decade and a half. Apparently wrong, and decidedly unimportant & bikesheddy, but not necessarily stupid.
  - mikemaccana 15y ago
    Kia specifically mentioned '2.6.x' naming. Obviously expecting three parts is AOK, expecting the kernel to remain at 2.6 forever is not.
    - angusgr 15y ago
      Well he said the '2.6.x naming scheme', which I took to mean the 3 part versioning scheme (as used in 2.6 kernel versions.) I agree with you that assuming the kernel would always be 2.6.x is not OK, I'd just assumed noone would be that shortsighted and stupid. :)
adambyrtek 15y ago