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Jeremy Allison writes:
'" The data shows that “frozen” vendor #Linux kernels, created by branching off a release point and then using a team of engineers to select specific patches to back-port to that branch, are buggier than the upstream “stable” Linux #kernel created by Greg Kroah-Hartman. '"
https://ciq.com/blog/why-a-frozen-linux-kernel-isnt-the-safest-choice-for-security/ #LinuxKernel
@kernellogger as usual, the point is not that these are bug free, but that they are regression free. The kernel upstream releases break userspace on every new release, and kernel maintainers don't care. See https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/a1912f712188291f9d7d434fba155461f1ebef66 for example, as Daan just found out, which removed a mount option without caring that it is still being used, so since 6.8 every btrfs device can no longer be mounted by systemd
thx, yeah, I already have been watching that.
1/ FWIW, I think you owe the kernel developers an apology, as you made a lot of noise and claimed "kernel maintainers don't care", when they clearly do once the problem was properly reported -- and quite quickly even. And yes, sure, in the ideal world they would have cared some more and performed a code-search before removing this option to prevent it in the first place. But we are all imperfect and make mistakes. Same for @pid_eins, who…
2/ …wrote "And my main beef here is that they claim they wouldnt do it ever..."[1], as that is not even true. They often try changes or removals to see if it breaks something – and if it does, it's reverted. Even the removal of the support for the original i386 was handled like that by Linus himself.
@kernellogger @pid_eins My impression, having more of an outside perspective and working with higher level languages: should deprecations perhaps always be gated with a config flag, perhaps even a common one similar to BROKEN?
With Java/Scala, it's always quite clear for me where deprecated methods are used. Also I can have builds fail due to that or not, so that I notice new deprecations when building / in CI.
there are various things that can work and I guess it depends on the situation what reasonable and effective.
For the kernel I something think "add delays (together with a msg in the logs) that grow longer and longer over time when people use deprecated stuff, at some point people get curious and will investigate" might be something that might help, OTOH it's a kind of stupid idea 