F8 kernel-2.6.24.3-12.fc8

[David Boles]

Callum Lerwick wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 11:15 -0500, Jarod Wilson wrote:
>> On Friday 07 March 2008 10:51:25 am Benjamin Kreuter wrote:
>>> On Thursday 06 March 2008 19:29:23 Chuck Ebbert wrote:
>>>> Sorry, we had to release with known bugs. A new kernel will be in
>>>> updates-testing very shortly.
>>> Why did you have to release with known bugs?  Why not just wait until the
>>> bugs are fixed?  The last three kernel updates broke suspend for me...
>> Uh... If we waited until all the known bugs were fixed, we'd never release 
>> *any* kernel... :)
>>
>> Despite this kernel making my own iwl4965 unusable, I was fully in favor of 
>> releasing it. In theory, we fixed more problems than we caused, and you're 
>> always welcome to keep running the prior kernel. (I'm actually running a 
>> slightly modified 2.6.24.2-7.fc8 now).
> 
> Yes, the real issue here is not all bugs, but regressions. Regressions
> are a major problem for Aunt Tillie. Kernel regressions can result in an
> unbootable, unusable system. I can't imagine ever deploying Fedora on
> Aunt Tillie's machine for exactly this reason, kernel regressions.
> 
> Use case: Aunt Tillie diligently keeps her Fedora machine up to date. A
> new kernel results in a regression with her hardware. Maybe it doesn't
> even boot. What does she do? Can we really expect her to know how to
> boot the previous kernel? How is she to even know it is the kernel that
> broke? Does she even know what a kernel is? How does she fix it? Booting
> the old kernel in GRUB is a one time deal. How does she make it stick?
> How does she blacklist the broken kernel? What does she do when 6 more
> broken kernels come through the update pipe?
> 
> What do *I* do to prevent this? Tell her to not update, and risk
> security issues? Should I have blacklisted updating the kernel before
> leaving her alone with the machine? Which still leaves the kernel
> potentially vulnerable.
> 
> This is not theoretical, I ran into this very kind of problem in F7. F7
> ran perfectly, initially. A kernel update (a bump from 2.6.21 to 2.6.22,
> mind you...) resulted in a reboot loop on my wife's eMachines m6805
> (x86_64) laptop. I even bugzilled it right away, though bugzilla's
> wonderous search functionality is refusing to find it right now. Many
> months and many kernel updates went by, all of them broken. It finally
> got fixed when the bug was discovered in the rawhide kernel and ended up
> on the F8 release blocker list.
> 
> This is a terrible user experience for *me*, let alone Aunt Tillie. I
> can't imagine subjecting Aunt Tillie to this without help.
> 
> Now, I'm not saying I have the solution to this, and I'm not saying the
> solution is easy. But IMHO this really needs to be addressed, somehow,
> if Fedora is to ever truly be "ready for the desktop".
> 


I don't think that "Aunt Tillie" should be using a bleeding edge Linux
distribution such as Fedora provides. And if "Nephew Johnie" installs it
for her and she has problems with it that she can not deal with herself I
think it is "Nephew Johny's" fault for installing it for her. What do you
think?

No distribution names mentioned here but there are several others that I
can think of that are much better suited for Newbies like your "Aunt Tillie".

-- 


   David