On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 10:29:05PM +0200, Hauke Mehrtens wrote:
> When you look at the users of old backports no one cares about using a
> supported kernel version. One group are the desktop users which are
> using Ubuntu, Debian, or some RedHat kernel, these kernels are based on
> 2.6.32 or some 3.X version. The other big group are the embedded
> developers which are using any random kernel version with many patches
> for some specific SoC in it. They do not care about security updates.
For what it's worth, this meshes with my experience as well. I'd even
go so far as to say that the latter group is the more significant.
Whatever kernel a random SoC vendor ships is what will be used until the
end of time. Encouraging board vendors to upgrade their software stack
to use to newer kernels is a battle that needs to be fought with the SoC
folks (not even considering crap like binary-only drivers), and it'll
subsequently trickle down to the folks craking out boards. The
devicetree migration is a great help here, but it won't do anything to
migrate the legacy platforms out there..
One particular battle I fought less than a year ago involved someone
unwilling to move from a 2.6.13 (!) kernel, even though I told them in
no uncertain terms that it would cost them an order of magnitude more
money to backport a wifi driver (and mac80211 etc) to that 2.6.13 kernel
than it would be to port their meagre handful of custom drivers to a
modern long-term 3.0/3.2 kernel.
And this was a network-exposed system too. ${deity}-only knows how many
security holes were in their even-more-ancient userspace.
> The bigger maintenance problem I currently see is the adding for more
> and more subsystems. The GPU drivers for example are taking about 30% of
> the time when adding support for a new linux next version.
...Especially when you consider that the GPU/DRM stuff also requires
updated userspace in order to do anything meaningful -- which is another
big speedbump.
I personally think it's a mistake to drop support for older kernels
because of the pain of porting GPU stuffs. I'm beginning to really miss
the simple "compat-wireless" days...
- Solomon
--
Solomon Peachy pizza at shaftnet dot org
Delray Beach, FL ^^ (email/xmpp) ^^
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
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