[Haifux] Kernel for Fedora: Repository or vanilla?

[Oron Peled]

On Sunday, 19 בSeptember 2010 22:56:28 Eli Billauer wrote:

1. I'll start with your kernel question:
   $ rpmquery kernel-PAE
   kernel-PAE-2.6.33.8-149.fc13.i686
   kernel-PAE-2.6.34.6-47.fc13.i686
   kernel-PAE-2.6.34.6-54.fc13.i686

2. So F-13 was updated from 2.6.33 series to 2.6.34 series kernels.
   Many of the updates related to Radeon, since a lot of work
   was done on this architecture during last year
    $ rpmquery --changelog kernel-PAE | grep -i radeon | wc -l
    29

BTW: this is just from June-2010. If you'll check on F-12, you'll find a
         similar count from Mar-2009 to this July

> And I hope not to upgrade my computer in the next three-four years at 
> least.

3. As a Fedora user myself, I must say you may have chose the
   wrong distribution for your criteria.
   Fedora is fast paced distribution:
    * Major release every 6 months
    * Only two supported releases (n, n-1) -- your F-12 should be EOL
      this January (no more bug fixes, no more security updates)
    * Many packages are updated during the ~1 year of a release
       (including the kernel)

4. If you want long maintenance cycle the "best" options now are:
    * Wait few months for Debian-Sqeeze (real soon now)
    * Wait few months for Centos-6 (REHL-6 are in Beta now)

> I happen to like when things work.

5. You are welcome to join us, Fedorans , with a 6-12 upgrade cycle.
   Things (mostly) work, and because of the fast updates, there are
   cases where you get fixes quicker -- (e.g: Radeon)
   Not to mention I like to develop with modern tools (gcc, autotools,
   libraries, etc.)

Oops, almost forgot. If you still want to compile your kernel. You may want
to start with current Fedora kernel as a basis:
  yum install rpmdevtools   # For the next utility
  rpmdev-setuptree            # set up a empty packaging tree under ~/rpmbuild

  # Let's download + expand the tree
  yumdownloader --source kernel
  rpm -ivh kernel-.....src.rpm
  cd ~/rpmbuild/SPECS
  rpmbuild -bp kernel.spec   # This is just the *prepare* build step
  cd ~/rpmbuild/BUILD/kernel-2.6.3*
  # You'll see two obvious directories: vanilla-2.6.x* and linux-2.6.3*

If you want to see how many patches separate the vanilla from Fedora:
  grep '^Patch[0-9]' ~rpmbuild/SPECS/kernel.spec | wc -l
It should be only 100-150 patches. If it looks bad to you, reconsider.
Distibutions that you wanted (3-5 years between major upgrades) have
around 1K patches   :-O

Cheers,

-- 
Oron Peled                                 Voice: +972-4-8228492
oron at actcom.co.il                  http://users.actcom.co.il/~oron
If it's there and you can see it, it's REAL
If it's there and you can't see it, it's TRANSPARENT
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If it's not there and you can't see it, it's GONE!

>    Eli
> 
> 
> Rami Rosen wrote:
> 
> > Hi, Eli,
> >
> >   
> >> So
> >> obviously there *are* updates to the kernel made by yum, but >somehow
> >> without changing the kernel version.
> >>     
> >
> > How many images do you have under /boot ? isn't it three?
> > ( ls /boot/vm*) ? and how many entries in grub.conf ?
> >
> > In case you have enough time for installation , consider Fedora 13
> > (Fedora 14, BTW,  should be available in 2.11.10)
> >
> >
> > Rgs,
> > Rami Rosen
> >
> >   
> 
> 
> -- 
> Web: http://www.billauer.co.il
> 
>