The Huge Disaster Within The Linux 2.6.35 Kernel

[V!NCENT]

Phoronix would get a lot more credit if the articles were more like: "We found a regression and it's already fixed in Linus' tree thanks to Phoronix".

That would be more like ego tripping "Hey look at us we are so fscking awesome! There was some issue, but it doesn't exist anymore because we fixed it!".

Should be more like "We reported this bug but it hasn't been fixed as of publishing this article".

But why do you guys even follow Phoronix if it isn't for staying up to date with development? I mean imagine you would like to test out the latest r600g with the latest kernel and found that the performance would be 50% less?

A kernel going skydiving from pretty good performance down to Windows levels in the earlier days is pretty much core news IMO.

[zoomblab]

it's inexplicable that a regression like this or change in behavior can even be accepted into the mainline Git tree at any point in the development cycle for such a mature project. That it can not only enter the kernel tree, but it can live for a week or more without either being corrected or the problematic commit being reverted. This is such a glaring performance issue across so many different tests and differently configured systems that it calls to question the current development practices and test procedures of the Linux kernel.

Says it all.

[Smorg]

Why would you find a regression, keep it a secret for a week, then blog about it without reporting a bug upstream? This isn't even RC1 and the purpose of this phase is for testing. Regressions are expected.

Calling it a release candidate might be a bit inappropriate though. I consider the kernel RCs to be beta quality, not RC quality. RC usually implies previous beta testing which doesn't exist in the kernel release cycle.

Also doing a kernel bisect doesn't take that long. I've done it with zen-sources to track down some weird crashing problems.

[chrisr]

"Have you tried running a 'git bisect' to find the first offending commit?"

Isn't this how everyone fixes their bugs these days ;-)?

[paravoid]

Would you please stop testing PRE-RELEASE software, and then fussing about
"Huge Disaster" or something alike ?
The same did happen with the BETA NVidia driver.

I really like phoronix, as it provides lots of interesting articles. However this kind of news confuses me.

paravoid.

[zoomblab]

Exactly. I'm getting sick of these articles boasting "we've found a problem, but we've kept it a secret".

Michael, have you contacted Linus? Have you reported it as a bug? Phoronix would get a lot more credit if the articles were more like: "We found a regression and it's already fixed in Linus' tree thanks to Phoronix".

Thing is, bugs like this shouldn't be allowed to enter into the main repository. Again, proper practices and test procedures...

[diegocg]

Dude, there's not even a -rc1, we are still in the merge week!! What the hell phoronix thinks its measuring?

[Creak]

I've got to say I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one to be upset with this kind of drama articles.

Honestly, showing a graph and just saying "it's better" or "it's worst" isn't journalism. For these kind of articles I expect to have some explanations. For example, I often hear about the mesa stack, but wtf is this stack? It seems to be almost as hard to understand as the sound stack in Linux!

I also often read articles title like "DRI2 has improved", "Xinput2 is released", "yet another DRM problem", "new version of this", "new version of that"... But all of us aren't Linux gurus, it'd be great to simply _explain_ what all these technos are (isn't it the main purpose of journalism?)

And finally, here is some kind of articles I'd like to see in Phoronix: https://www.linuxfr.org/2010/05/17/26852.html
I'm sorry, it's in french, maybe you can google-translate it?
patrick_g does this kind of articles at each kernel release. And even if I don't understand everything in Linux kernel, patrick_g explains RC by RC what are the improvements and what are the issues the developers had, he even interviews few developers to know how they got involved in the kernel or to explain what they have done in the kernel. It's important to say that despite the very good quality of patrick_g's articles, he doesn't know anything about coding.

[FireBurn]

OMG what drama

this is a .35-rc1 kernel for crying out loud!

beside that, the quality of articles here on phoronix has been nose diving for a while now. I'm even beginning to get annoyed.

Michael, you have to do better and you can because it was good in the beginning. Articles like this are total crap and do you and your site no service at all

Actually what's really annoying is rc1 hasn't even been released yet, so it's only hard core git users that have tested the interim code that's went in since 2.6.34's release. I'm sure the regression would have been found after rc1's release if it's really as bad as Michael is making out

But then again that won't sell advertising will it?

[ttk5]

Too much drama! Too few relevance !

I'm removing phoronix's feed today from my RSS reader.