back to article Linux kernel 4.18 delayed: Bug ate my rc7, says Linus Torvalds

Linux kernel supremo Linus Torvalds has taken the rare step of reverting a kernel release candidate – after it went sour. All looked sunny enough on Sunday evening, when he set Linux 4.18-rc7 free to roam: “Unless something odd happens, this should be the last rc for 4.18,” the chief penguinista wrote. Something odd did, …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    That's the advantage of running Windows...

    Microsoft would never dream of delaying a forced Windows update due to bugs being found, so Windows people always get the new stuff first!

    1. Hans 1
      Linux

      Re: That's the advantage of running Windows...

      Upvoted for the smile, but, here, we are just talking a Kernel + drivers + subsystems, NOT userspace stuff. Then again, 1803 was released in March^H^H^H^H^HMay^H^H^HJune.

      So lets compare to a distribution MS is attempting to mimic, resulting in bi-annual (Spring and Fall) catastrophes for MS:

      In the history of Ubuntu, has Ubuntu ever been two months or even, say, two weeks late ?*

      *Spoiler Alert: answer is never ...

      How many packages does Ubuntu ship ?

      How many people work on Debian and Ubuntu ?

      DISCLAIMER: I do not run Ubuntu on my boxes, however, the current release has a sexy name, I tell ya!

      1. beezly

        Re: That's the advantage of running Windows...

        "*Spoiler Alert: answer is never ..." except 6.06 - Dapper Drake, was delayed by two months. It should have been released in April 2006. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2006-March/000094.html

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      Re: That's the advantage of running Windows...

      > Microsoft would never dream of delaying a forced Windows update due to bugs being found, so Windows people always get the new stuff first!

      Sixty upvotes: you all do realize he's being sarcastic ?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: That's the advantage of running Windows...

        Sixty upvotes: you all do realize he's being sarcastic ?

        You do realize what patronising means ?

      2. onefang

        Re: That's the advantage of running Windows...

        "Sixty upvotes: you all do realize he's being sarcastic ?"

        Which is precisely why I upvoted him.

      3. nijam Silver badge

        Re: That's the advantage of running Windows...

        > Sixty upvotes: you all do realize he's being sarcastic ?

        Hmmm... Are you completely sure about that?

      4. This post has been deleted by its author

      5. GIRZiM
        Facepalm

        Re: you all do realize he's being sarcastic ?

        You haven't been here long, have you?

        The commentardiat here are a sarcastic bunch and that's precisely what everybody upvoted him for.

  2. arctic_haze
    Windows

    Linus should really learn from Microsoft

    Beta testing of the operating system is a job for end users, not the developers. This archaic system Torvalds sticks to explains why Linux cannot dominate anything except smart phones and supercomputers. Oh, wait...

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Linus should really learn from Microsoft

      It's a curious flavour of Linux that dominates smartphones today, chosen as it was in a hurry to bring iPhone-competitors to market. Google happened to have Android - then a tentative OS for mobile devices with keyboards - and they evidently considered it the best starting place for getting a touchscreen OS out the door as fast as possible. Obviously Rubin chose Linux as his foundation for Android a few years earlier because of its open nature, but it's an open nature that has been largely lost in the Android versions most of use today.

      For starters, the version of Android most commonly used is full of proprietary drivers and Googly APIs. Ironic that chief amongst them is Location Services, since Rubin's original application for Android was an OS for location-aware digital cameras (an idea previously given to Sony by Steve Jobs on one of his visits to Sony HQ).

      Still, if you broaden your 'dominate smartphones' assertion to OSs inspired by UNIX then you can bring count iOS and BB10. Tizen and Sailfish ( and others that came out of Nokia/Intel MeeGo, Moblin, Maemo efforts), are Linux based, as was webOS, still living on in LG televisions. Oops, nearly forgot Firefox OS, and Ubuntu for phones.

      Windows Mobile, just about dead, obviously wasn't Linux based. BB10, Unix-like, is dead, though the proprietary OS it's based on, QNX, is alive and well because it's superior to Linux for some applications (it's smaller, Real Time and very well tested) including industrial control.

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Linus should really learn from Microsoft

        It's curious that a 40year old OS built to do text processing on minicomputers is now running both your cell phone, the cloud computer farms that it connects to and most of the network infrastructure that does the connecting.

        Either Unix is very good, or software engineers are very lazy

        1. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge

          Re: Linus should really learn from Microsoft

          Linux is not Unix.

          1. Beau
            Linux

            Re: Linus should really learn from Microsoft

            (Linux is not Unix.)

            You are right, it is certainly not!

            It is the clever child, of the clever child, of the clever child, of the clever child, of the clever child, of the clever child,-----------------, of Unix.

          2. Jamesit

            Re: Linus should really learn from Microsoft

            Linux isn't Unix. Unix is an OS and Linux is a kernel.

        2. stephanh

          Re: Linus should really learn from Microsoft

          Unix won because worse is better.

          https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

          "...especially worthless is consistency of interface."

          1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

            Re: Linus should really learn from Microsoft

            "Unix won because worse is better."

            No!! Windows won because worse is better. (Otherwise the pure hack of Windows 1.x would,'t have survived against OS/2 + the severely delayed Presentation Manager)

            But:

            A wrong lesson is to take the parable literally and to conclude that C is the right vehicle for AI software. The 50% solution has to be basically right, and in this case it isn't.

            Ah, the East Coast hackers and their LISP. Well, at least we know nowadays that there is no single language for AI software. You need to design one adapted to your problem.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Linus should really learn from Microsoft

          "Either Unix is very good, or software engineers are very lazy"

          I don't think that's really an "or".

          And "lazy" isn't necessarily a bad thing. See "efficiency".

        4. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
          Linux

          Re: Linus should really learn from Microsoft

          Either Unix is very good, or software engineers are very lazy

          Just keep it simple, and functional (i.e. puke out a monolithic Linux kernel instead of waiting for something based on a microkernel to ripen). Did I mention simple: The Art of Unix Programming. (Some chapters may need review in that book though).

          Principles should be few. Manuals should be thin. Learing curves should be flat (i.e. you should not need to pull in 10 different knowledge areas when you need to add something to a simple desktop application).

          Somewhere in there the viewpoint of "keeping things simple for the C programmer" persists, but C is just horribad and an impediment to smooth design and development nowadays. The symptom is in the difficulty of multithreading applications. Time to morph, I guess.

      2. bazza Silver badge

        Re: Linus should really learn from Microsoft

        @Dave 126,

        It's a curious flavour of Linux that dominates smartphones today, chosen as it was in a hurry to bring iPhone-competitors to market.

        I've often wondered if it could be called "Linux" at all. My own humble opinion is that it could, at most, be described as being Linux-ish, but is not Linux because it's a separate source code tree (albeit one with a lot of the same source code). By extension that means I don't believe that RedHat's kernels are Linux either.

        One may consider the system calling interface to be the only worthwhile definition of what makes something "Linux" (because that's the only thing all the variations maintain consistently across the board). Code compiled for x86 Linux will run on RedHat, a stock kernel, Ubuntu, Android for x86 (distro dependencies permitting).

        The thing is, Solaris, QNX, FreeBSD and Windows all support the Linux system calling interface these days to a greater or lesser extent. So does that make them "Linux" too? By this particular definition, yes it does. Is that completely bonkers? I'm not sure.

        For example, Microsoft could (with a fair bit of work) emit a bastardised version of Windows 10 that lacks the Windows services and userland stuff, but has Windows Subsystem for Linux, an entire Ubuntu userland / init, booting into Gnome. It would run more or less like Ubuntu. It would look like Ubuntu. Linux apps would run on it just fine. From a user's point of view, it would be an Ubuntu. Certainly most non-technical users would be unable to distinguish the difference. But underneath it'd be a WindowsNT kernel masquerading as a Linux kernel.

        Google's Project Treble, which will turn Linux into a microkernel (snarfle!) is even less Linux than Android is today. Is there a trademark on "Linux"?

        Windows Mobile, just about dead, obviously wasn't Linux based. BB10, Unix-like, is dead, though the proprietary OS it's based on, QNX, is alive and well because it's superior to Linux for some applications (it's smaller, Real Time and very well tested) including industrial control.

        It's a pity about BB10. As a mobile OS it was really, properly good from purely technical point of view. Still is. It was just way too late. Whilst everyone has struggled to shoe-horn desktop sized OSes into battery powered devices (with laughable battery consumption as a result, at least to begin with), BB10 was the right sized OS from the very start.

        QNX is indeed alive and well and pretty good, in part because BlackBerry gave it good GUI libraries and tools (something it'd lacked prior to then). The proper real time-ness and the GUI stuff makes for some pretty slick in car entertainment systems.

  3. gurugeorge

    Blah blah

  4. LeahroyNake

    Fu@#ing Impressed

    Torvalds managed that whole post without swearing...

    1. Goobertee

      Re: Fu@#ing Impressed

      Could it be one more sign of the apocalypse?

    2. Hans 1

      Re: Fu@#ing Impressed

      You do not seem to be subscribed to the kernel mail list, so, you miss 99.7% of his messages that are free of swearing ... just because some devs are stubborn and will not listen to common sense or pay attention to arguments ... I can think of Kay Sievers, Lennart Poettering, and sometimes, much more rarely, Kees Cook.

  5. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Stop

    Oh no!

    Linus' "You are Going Down" face.

  6. bazza Silver badge

    Android Security?

    One large headache involves ashmem, an application-level virtual memory area type introduced to the Linux kernel to solve a problem arising from Android's security paranoia.

    Android lacks a writable tmpfs temporarily file system, to prevent malicious applications doing naughty or messy stuff in /tmp,...

    Er, forgive me if I'm being a bit dense, but surely security on Android is far from being good enough in other areas for a lack of tmpfs to be of any real benefit? There being no tmpfs doesn't exactly seem to have stopped malware rooting Android, doing nasty things, etc.

  7. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
    Linux

    Sour Kernel

    Linux kernel supremo Linus Torvalds has taken the rare step of reverting a kernel release candidate – after it went sour.

    Sweet and Sour Chicken Penguin.

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