back to article Linus Torvalds seeks REDEMPTION for every coded SIN

Linus Torvalds is going away this week. He's not saying where he's going, or why, but “the fact that I'll be traveling with very bad internet connection next week” was enough for the lord of Linux to push version 3.12 of the kernel out the door on Sunday. Torvalds made the announcement that 3.12 is now with us on the Linux …

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  1. Cliff

    Woodland Creature?

    >>>(cough*cough*moronic*woodland creature*cough*cough)<<<

    I came up with beaver, then owl. Didn't really see either of those as particularly cutting insults. Deer? Still not feeling it. Woodpecker would be quite cheeky but hardly worth the drama.

    What am I missing?!

    1. mIRCat
      Linux

      Re: Woodland Creature?

      "What am I missing?!"

      You forgot Sassy Squirrel or Ridiculous Raccoon.

      There ain't no Tux in the woods.

      1. Tom 7

        Re: Woodland Creature? No Tux in the woods???

        The yellow eyed penguin on Enderby Islands in NZ 'nests' in forests!

        Never underestimate the power of linux to appear where you least expect - its been flying for a long time.

    2. BenR
      Joke

      Re: Woodland Creature?

      >>>(cough*cough*moronic*woodland creature*cough*cough)<<<

      "Stupid Sasquatch"

    3. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

      Re: Woodland Creature?

      Wacky Woodpecker

      Dorky Deer

      Maniacal Moose

    4. Rick Giles
      Linux

      Re: Woodland Creature?

      >>>(cough*cough*moronic*woodland creature*cough*cough)<<<

      >What am I missing?!<

      I believe that that might be a reference to Ubuntu.. But I could be wrong.

      And speaking of wrong... Don't get me wrong. I like Ubuntu. I install it on systems for people that are tired of Windoze and all the virus hunts they've been subjected to. It (Ubuntu) is easy enough for me to manage remotely if need be and it has a decent update manager.

      I myself prefer Slackware, but that's just becasue I'm a Masochist... Not really, I just cut my Linux teeth on it back in the mid 90's.

    5. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      Re: Woodland Creature?

      I took it as a reference to inter-arboreal defaecation but are creatures of ursine persuasion moronic? I get the feeling that treating one as such might be a little bit of a mistake.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    More interest is what's in the next Kernel release

    Should have the dynamic re-clocking and decent power management enabled for Radeon cards. Thanks to AMD's shitty manoeuvre in dropping support for for anything less than a HD5000 (including windows) it leaves users reliant on the FOSS drivers for Xorg compatibility. AMD look at Nvidia's support cycle if you care about your customers, it puts you to shame.

    Unfortunately I cannot change the HD4570 in my laptop for an Nvidia solution.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: More interest is what's in the next Kernel release

      For further reading on the forthcoming Radeon dynamic power management and HDMI audio in 3.13 please see this Phoronix article:

      http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTUwMTY

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If Mr T was to say something like, "OK, you bunch of idiotic morons, no more new features! Absolutely zero new features until all the existing bugs and problems are fixed. Even if you write new stuff, I am not going to include it. Bug fixes only this time around, and the sooner you do all that, the sooner you can get back to the stuff you like doing. Suck on that and give me the goods. So there!" It just might work. Which would be good.

    1. James Hughes 1

      My thoughts precisely. I see no reason why they shouldn't add a little 'professionalism' to the development, and by that I don't mean to insult the obviously talented people who write much of the kernel code, but to say that in my job, as an alleged professional, I spend a lot of time fixing bugs in product, so it's fit for purpose. Kernel developers should understand it's part of being professional. You don't get to work on the good stuff all the time.

      And while they are at it, can someone fit GIT so it's usable by humans without 2 years of training.

      1. DanDanDan

        What's wrong with Git?

        I like git. It's not even difficult to use. You can even phase it in gradually (use only what you need and ignore the rest) and apply it retrospectively (with a single command in many cases!). I admit I don't use/need many of its advanced features (that I know about), but I'm yet to find anything that comes even close to its usability without totally ensnaring my entire project. If I want to leave Git at any point in the future, I'm confident it won't be an issue.

        1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          Re: What's wrong with Git?

          I have to agree with DanDanDan. Git may not be my first choice for change-management software, but it's not difficult. I know two professors who've had students use it in writing courses - and these aren't CS students, and generally don't have any experience with change management. (Many of them have never used the command line before.) But with a cheat sheet of simple commands and a quick introductory demonstration and exercise, they don't have any trouble pulling updates from others or pushing their own.

          Merging is slightly more complicated when there are conflicts, but even that's mostly a matter of practice.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        > but to say that in my job, as an alleged professional, I spend a lot of time fixing bugs in product,

        I wonder if that says something about the overall quality of the code you write..

        >You don't get to work on the good stuff all the time.

        There are multiple "stable" linux branches that only get fixes.

        --> https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html

        Even if Linus says that the merge for 4.0 is only for fixes that doesn't stop devs working in their own local branches* on their own brand new stuff and pushing it for 4.1 so I don't actually see how this will stop people "working on the good stuff" and don't think that's actually the intention either.

        >And while they are at it, can someone fit GIT so it's usable by humans without 2 years of training.

        Lots of people use git without issue or "2 years of training". If you can't operate the CLI try one of the many frontends.. if you can't manage that then you're a lost cause.

        * That's if they can operate git of course.

    2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      If Mr T was to say something like...

      Surely Mr T wouldn't get through that whole paragraph without pitying the fool somewhere.

  4. foxyshadis

    Wouldn't the "bugs fixed only! no new features!" actually be a final 3.xx feature, while 3.99/4.0 is supposed to be the horribly broken release where nothing works, everything crashes, but it's crazy fast and doubly awesome? And around 4.4 regular people actually start migrating to it?

    Because that's the basic idea of almost every product release. Don't screw with our expectations, Linus!

    The worst possible outcome would be to adopt a FIrefox-style new major version every 4 months.

    1. Richard 22

      I wish I could upvote and downvote your post.

      I agree with the version numbering comments, but not the comment "The worst possible outcome would be to adopt a FIrefox-style new major version every 4 months."

      Why? Linus has made it quite clear his numbering scheme is based on assigning a new version number when he feels like it. How would every 4 months/ 2 years/6 days/decade really be significantly different to that? I think you're assigning more importance to version numbers than they deserve (in both the Linux and Firefox cases).

  5. Tim 11
    Happy

    bigger is better

    If linux is going to compete with other software in any serious way the version numbers need to get much bigger quickly - everyone knows higher version numbers are better. Chrome browser was only released a couple of years ago and that's on about version 30 already. Windows 2000 was almost exactly 250 times better than windows 8. LT should take advantage of this and leapfrog everyone else to bring out linux version 3000

  6. Tromos

    Distros too

    This is a great idea. I wish it could be expanded to some of the non-kernel features where long-standing bugs and incomplete (to the point of non-existence) documentation are plentiful. I know this isn't the fun part of development but if the product is ever going to be a match for the commercial offerings, it needs to be done. One prolonged period to catch up with the backlog and then a housekeeping month once a year would IMHO work wonders.

    1. Nigel 11

      Re: Distros too

      There's already a long-term-stable kernel out there: the one that Red Hat maintain, and Centos and Scientific Linux free-beer clone. Security and other fixes from more recent linux kernels are back-ported to 2.6.18 (for RHEL 5) which will continue to be maintained for five years after RHEL7 release date. Same pattern for RHEL6 (2.6.32 based)

      Last time I looked (a good while ago) the 2.4 kernel was also still healthy, on volunteer life-support.

      There are pros and cons of feature-frozen bug-fixed kernels, and the Linux community can have its cake AND eat it. The biggest drawback is probably new CPU designs and a frozen kernel that doesn't fully support them, or doesn't support them at all.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Distros too

      > where long-standing bugs and incomplete (to the point of non-existence) documentation are plentiful.

      This is how it works:

      1. Identify the problem and fix the problem*

      2. Send it to the upstream or the package maintainer of your distribution of choice to include and possible upstream

      3. ?????

      4. Profit.

      *If you can't fix it at least report it.

  7. phil dude
    Linux

    device summary?

    A nice feature that could be organically grown, although I am not sure how, is the device status tree for a kernel.

    By that, I mean a website where the status of a driver (stable,unstable,experimental,please help!) could be checked/tracked. I know it would be a big list but it might help enthuse developers and the general public to understand what is going on under the hood...

    Not everyone likes digging code like we do....;-)

    P.

  8. jonfr

    Moving to FreeBSD

    This is why I am moving to FreeBSD and PC-BSD for desktop (since desktop stuff takes long time to come to FreeBSD).

    This version number and bug ridden code in Linux is not something that I suggest for any user. Good in testing yes, but not so when using in Desktop or server environment.

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