On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 10:34:03AM +0100, Chris Newport wrote:
> Why does a Linux distribution need the latest bleeding edge kernel ?
> With no new hardware to support it should be easy to put together a
> distribution with the last known good kernel and the latest applications.
Unfortunately parts of user space often end up depending upon features
only availiable in newer kernels. For example, one of the current
pressures on less actively maintained ports is the lack of ongoing
support for the old LinuxThreads implementation of POSIX threads. The
new NPTL implementation requires kernel support which was introduced
with 2.6. The installer has similar issues and even applications that
you might not think of as being particularly low level can end up
wanting newer system calls - squid and postfix both want epoll, for
example.
It probably is actually less work to get a newer kernel running than to
keep user space support for older kernels.
--
"You grabbed my hand and we fell into it, like a daydream - or a fever."
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