Thoughts on Ubuntu maintaining Jessie's kernel ~ discuss

[vbrummond]

This is getting blown out of proportion. There are no "cracks forming" because they decided to support a certain version of the kernel. I also don't understand where the init system comes into this. I'd like to see some hard data and not duf rants.

[Linadian]

From this message https://lists.debian.org/debian-kernel/ ... 00413.html it sounds like Ben Hutchings will pickup support for the 3.16 kernel in April 2016.

Q: Will Linux 3.16 get long term support from upstream?
A: The Linux 3.16-stable branch will *not* be maintained as a longterm
branch at kernel.org. However, the Ubuntu kernel team will continue to
maintain that branch, following the same rules for acceptance and
review, until around April 2016. I can continue maintenance from then
until the end of regular support for 'jessie'.

That is also around the time that Squeeze LTS support ends.

Thank you, that clears up the date(s) issue(s). But it still doesn't instill a whole lot of confidence, so for the hypothetical 2nd half of Jessie's life, Ben will be the only kernel 'guardian'?

I fit in to a few categories, PC hardware enthusiast, anti-monopoly OSes (that includes that pretentious/overpriced 'fruit' corp), tinkerer, etc, but I by no means have any mission critical systems (I have a dedicated HDD for file storage, separate from my dual SSD Raid 0, it's even readable by a an MS machine if such an emergency arose), so all of this really won't affect me that much, I don't care who patches the kernel, as long as it works and it has no spyware in it. But rest assured, the first whiff of malfeasance of any kind, I'll be running for the hills (another distro), probably to the relief of some, lol.

All that being said, there are people that do depend on Debian's (infrastructure) stability and longevity much more than I do, they'll be watching this 'development' (no pun intended, heh) more closely than simpleton tinkerers like me.

I'm going to quietly back away from this convo now and let the pros duke it out.

[Gyokuro]

The process which patches get merged from upstream is open due the Ubuntu's kernel maintainer send the patches for further review to stable@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org and Ubuntu's kernel-team@lists.ubuntu.com so there is nothing secret in it. I think the biggest problem is that people do not trust that much said distributor but I think as long patches get reviewed from the kernel.org community they should be ok. To maintaine a kernel over such a long period is quite a task and it would be interesting how much time the current Debian kernel maintainer for Wheezy need to filter out all patches and prepare a new kernel release.

[hakerdefo]

This is getting blown out of proportion. There are no "cracks forming" because they decided to support a certain version of the kernel. I also don't understand where the init system comes into this. I'd like to see some hard data and not duf rants.

Two very very critical components, kernel and init system, of the next Debian stable will be under the influence of Canonical and Red Hat. These are hard facts.
A tale of a big corporation, manipulation and Linux kernel,
Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source
Cheers!!!

[dilberts_left_nut]

Two very very critical components, kernel and init system, of the next Debian stable will be under the influence of Canonical and Red Hat. These are ...

FUD.

RedHat wrote a good portion of the software in Debian and also a lot of kernel code - that doesn't give them any more "control" or even "influence" than any other upstream.
A distro such as Debian is about packaging and integration - not writing code.

As for the "buntu" kernel, of course Debian is 'in control' of the Debian kernel packages and what patches are included or not, it will simply be based on a version that Canonical is doing the major backporting grunt work on, rather than the upstream LTS that would normally be the case if the timing wasn't shite.

A tale of a big corporation, manipulation and Linux kernel,
Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

That's for the $(kernels+patches) shipped with RHEL and has nothing to do with the code from kernel.org or Debian.

[hakerdefo]

Slackware, Gentoo and Debian are fundamentally different distributions but the following is still an interesting comparison,
Slackware = 7 member strong development team
Gentoo = Around 175 active developers
Debian = Around 1500 active developers
And who out of these three relies on outsiders to maintain the kernel and develop init system?
There is something wrong with the way in which Debian project has been handled recently. Decision makers at the top are busy in-fighting and promoting their own agendas and ignoring the voice of majority of Debian users (for example systemd). The direction in which the Debian project is being lead doesn't bide well for the future.
According to W3techs figures Debian is used by 30.7% of all the websites who use Linux. Next is Ubuntu with 24.8%, CentOS with 19.8% and Red Hat with 4.9%. There are plenty of gainers in Debian's fall if and when it happens. I sincerely wish it never happens.
Enough conspiracy theories for the day
Cheers!!!

[vbrummond]

Edit: Ah, I didn't see Dilberts reply above which basically says the same thing.

Two very very critical components, kernel and init system, of the next Debian stable will be under the influence of Canonical and Red Hat.

Debian is made almost entirely up by software not made by Debian.

These are hard facts.

The word you are looking for is drama.

A tale of a big corporation, manipulation and Linux kernel,
Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

Code obfuscation is not relevant to this issue. The kernel source comes from kernel.org, not redhat.com.

[confuseling]

1) Debian never developed an init system, and often imports kernel work done by other people. Feel absolutely free to dislike that, but don't pretend it's a change in direction.

2) Most Debian users use Debian because of its high maintenance standards - only qualified people get to make decisions. We didn't get to vote on the init system, and that's unambiguously a good thing. We don't vote on how bridges are built, or when surgery is necessary either.

[mor]

Decision makers at the top are busy in-fighting and promoting their own agendas and ignoring the voice of majority of Debian users (for example systemd).

(Emphasis added)

I am not challenging the validity of the statement, I personally wouldn't know what to say about it, but I can't help wondering if are you saying it as a speculation or if you have actual evidence to support it (I'm primarily interested in the underlined part)?

Bye

[hakerdefo]

Decision makers at the top are busy in-fighting and promoting their own agendas and ignoring the voice of majority of Debian users (for example systemd).

(Emphasis added)

I am not challenging the validity of the statement, I personally wouldn't know what to say about it, but I can't help wondering if are you saying it as a speculation or if you have actual evidence to support it (I'm primarily interested in the underlined part)?

Bye

Debian technical committee in-fighting evidence,
Debian Tech Committee Falling Further Into Disarray
If you search the three most visited forums by Debian users, Debian User Forums debian forums Linux Questions, for 'systemd' related threads you'll find that majority of people posting there are not happy with systemd as default init for Debian. While this is not a scientific evidence but it is still good enough to judge the mood of the users.
P.S. A couple of unscientific polls,
: systemd vs. upstart, or else?
Which init system are you using in Debian?
Cheers!!!

[Gyokuro]

The title is about Jessie's kernel not the Init system but in case that much users are against systemd what should be used instead so that the same people which are whining about systemd are happy again? The problem is the alternatives are not better as the elected one.

[vbrummond]

While this is not a scientific evidence but it is still good enough to judge the mood of the users.

That does not make it a wrong decision. People will always complain about everything, no matter what, whether they understand it or not. The developers voted on the issue.

[confuseling]

Further, it really isn't enough to judge the mood of anything other than a noisy minority, as you tacitly acknowledge by pointing out that it's not scientific. What proportion of users ever post on forums? Of those, what proportion engage in arguments, instead of just posting the occasional question? These people are anything but representative.

I strongly suspect if you did an actual poll, the winning answer would be something along the lines of "I don't really care, as long as my server works and is easy to administrate"...

[dasein]

It's impossible to argue with the clinically delusional.

(Just sayin')

[Linadian]

Ima gunna chime in on systemd, I really don't care what they use, as long as;
1) it's not buggy
2) it's not insecure
3) it's not annoying (as in goofy or stupid to use, I know, poor choice of words but let's face it, some things are)
4) It's COMPATIBLE, I tend to like cross-platform, I consider that a good thing for the Linux world
5) Although I'm not a maintainer, easy to maintain would be good, who needs more headaches?

Wikipedia always has some interesting takes, check out the chart below the 'Controversy' section.

Here is freedesktop.org's systemd page.

Edit: Another nifty chart, scroll down a bit.

[hakerdefo]

It's impossible to argue with the clinically delusional.

(Just sayin')

A delusion is a belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary.
My beliefs related to this thread,
1) Involvement of commercial corporations like Canonical and Red Hat with the vital operating system components like kernel and init system is a bad idea especially since those corporations will be direct gainers from Debian's decline. Links with the relevant data are in my previous post.
2) Discussions and polls in the various forums frequented by Debian users suggest that majority of the Debian users are not happy with systemd as default init. Again see my previous post for the relevant data.
3) Distributions with far less manpower and monetary resources compared to Debian can develope their own init system (OpenRC), forked bleeding OpenSSL (LibreSSL) and Debian with it's huge resources can't even maintain the kernel of the next stable release?!? This is for sure not because of lack of skilled manpower. There are plenty of Debian developers who are willing and qualified to maintain the kernel but they were not given the opportunity by the Debian leadership for reasons unknown.
Now if and when someone provides superior evidence against the above stated beliefs, I'll be on my way to the nearest psychologist.
Cheers!!!

[dilberts_left_nut]

1. Already covered previously - "the evil corporations" have had their **** in your pie for a very long time, and it probably wouldn't exist as anything quite as usable (is 'tasty' pushing that metaphor too far?) without "them".

2. The number of uninformed users whining on forums because they read a blog telling them that the sky is falling is hardly a measure of the suitability of an init system.
There are indeed valid arguments both for and against adopting systemd as the default init for Jessie, and the people who get to decide - the devs - did.

3. Those distro's also support nowhere near the volume of software that Debian does, or in the integrated and usable manner of Debian's stable release.

If you think that there are queues of idle devs sitting around just waiting to be "allowed" to maintain a kernel that is unsupported by upstream, or to support yet another init system, then you should definitely be booking that appointment.

[Randicus]

A delusion is a belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary.

I am not attacking your ideas. In fact I agree with some of them. Like disagreeing with the rush to adopt systemd and contemplating out-sourcing kernel maintenance. However:

1) Involvement of commercial corporations

In itself is not bad. Each case must be examined before a conclusion can be made about a corporation's good or bad behaviour.

2) Discussions and polls in the various forums frequented by Debian users suggest that majority of the Debian users are not happy with systemd as default init.

It definitely shows that many users are (myself among them), but it does not indicate how big or small the proportion is.

3)Distributions with far less manpower and monetary resources compared to Debian can develope their own init system (OpenRC), forked bleeding OpenSSL (LibreSSL) and Debian with it's huge resources can't even maintain the kernel of the next stable release?!? This is for sure not because of lack of skilled manpower. There are plenty of Debian developers who are willing and qualified to maintain the kernel but they were not given the opportunity by the Debian leadership for reasons unknown.

Although I agree with the first part, I even mentioned at the beginning of the thread how amazing it is that a distro with the large resources Debian has does not have enough manpower for kernel maintenance , where do you get the idea from that there is an untapped pool of kernel maintainers? And that they are not being allowed to help? I doubt there are hordes of people capable of doing kernel maintenance.

[hakerdefo]

@dilberts_left_nut
Those are your beliefs and I respect them but they can hardly be classified as superior evidence.

[hakerdefo]

Although I agree with the first part, I even mentioned at the beginning of the thread how amazing it is that a distro with the large resources Debian has does not have enough manpower for kernel maintenance , where do you get the idea from that there is an untapped pool of kernel maintainers? And that they are not being allowed to help? I doubt there are hordes of people capable of doing kernel maintenance.

I'm not saying that there are hordes of developers capable of maintaining the kernel, I'm saying there are enough capable developers in Debian with skills and willingness to maintain the kernel.
Cheers!!!