4 ms·

Agreed, the tone of the quotes is scarily relaxed. This should not be how good software dev is done. Maybe they are being more rigorous than I give them credit

Agreed, the tone of the quotes is scarily relaxed. This should not be how good software dev is done. Maybe they are being more rigorous than I give them credit but it doesn't sound good.

pengaru 3y ago
The transparency of FOSS conferring exceptionally high visibility into how the sausage is made often creates this kind of impression. But in reality what's happening here is folks are getting access to bleeding-edge kernel development snapshots who choose to run these kernel versions, and are lucky to get such quick access to patches even before the scope of new bugs are entirely understood by the developers. Note there's nothing preventing these affected users from simply running a prior known-stable kernel version until the bug is better understood, they're opting in on the chaos. It's unfair to assume Dave Chinner et al won't be running the issue seemingly fixed by this one-line change fully to ground. If you're not interested in playing the role of kernel QA and interacting with the upstream devs when things break in not yet understood ways, don't run bleeding edge kernel versions. LTS and -stable releases are offered for a reason.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  You're not the first person to propose this, but like all those other people, you are wrong. 6.3 is the latest "stable" release. It is the version front and center on kernel.org. There is nothing "bleeding-edge" about it.
  - pengaru 3y ago
    Ah I didn't notice 6.3 had already been promoted to stable, that's unfortunate. Relative to a kernel version you'd encounter in something like rhel or debian stable however, tracking mainline's "stable" branch is still pretty damn aggressive.
    - Filligree 3y ago
      > Relative to a kernel version you'd encounter in something like rhel or debian stable however, tracking mainline's "stable" branch is still pretty damn aggressive. If you want to run hardware released in the last year or so, LTS kernels have a funny tendency not to ever work. I've yet to buy a laptop that didn't at least need latest mainline. It shouldn't have to count as 'aggressive' to want a kernel that will work with my hardware, but I guess that's what we get when there's no HAL.
jrmg 3y ago
If a change causes problems that were not there before, it obviously wasn’t understood when it was written. Better to back it out _while_ you try to understand things than to leave it in until the situation is fully understood.

Agreed, the tone of the quotes is scarily relaxed. This should not be how good software dev is done. Maybe they are being more rigorous than I give them credit but it doesn't sound good.

pengaru 3y ago

The transparency of FOSS conferring exceptionally high visibility into how the sausage is made often creates this kind of impression. But in reality what's happening here is folks are getting access to bleeding-edge kernel development snapshots who choose to run these kernel versions, and are lucky to get such quick access to patches even before the scope of new bugs are entirely understood by the developers. Note there's nothing preventing these affected users from simply running a prior known-stable kernel version until the bug is better understood, they're opting in on the chaos. It's unfair to assume Dave Chinner et al won't be running the issue seemingly fixed by this one-line change fully to ground. If you're not interested in playing the role of kernel QA and interacting with the upstream devs when things break in not yet understood ways, don't run bleeding edge kernel versions. LTS and -stable releases are offered for a reason.

jeffbee 3y ago
You're not the first person to propose this, but like all those other people, you are wrong. 6.3 is the latest "stable" release. It is the version front and center on kernel.org. There is nothing "bleeding-edge" about it.
- pengaru 3y ago
  Ah I didn't notice 6.3 had already been promoted to stable, that's unfortunate. Relative to a kernel version you'd encounter in something like rhel or debian stable however, tracking mainline's "stable" branch is still pretty damn aggressive.
  - Filligree 3y ago
    > Relative to a kernel version you'd encounter in something like rhel or debian stable however, tracking mainline's "stable" branch is still pretty damn aggressive. If you want to run hardware released in the last year or so, LTS kernels have a funny tendency not to ever work. I've yet to buy a laptop that didn't at least need latest mainline. It shouldn't have to count as 'aggressive' to want a kernel that will work with my hardware, but I guess that's what we get when there's no HAL.

jrmg 3y ago

If a change causes problems that were not there before, it obviously wasn’t understood when it was written. Better to back it out _while_ you try to understand things than to leave it in until the situation is fully understood.