From: garrett@sba70.berkeley.edu (Garrett D'Amore) Subject: Re: Intel, the Pentium and Linux Date: 27 Apr 1993 21:44:30 GMT
In article <1rk7kdINNjj@rave.larc.nasa.gov> jcburt@gatsibm.larc.nasa.gov () writes:
>In article <willmore.735940750@beijing.gis.iastate.edu> willmore@iastate.edu (David Willmore) writes:
>>jerry@msi.com (Jerry Shekhel) writes:
>>
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>>I'm just looking around our network here for an example or two. Ok, here's
>>a ReadOnly NFS server that's been up since Oct 1 1992. There are several
>>more here with times in Nov and Dec '92. Anyone have a Linux system *that*
>>stable? If you do, you're running .95 or earlier and therefor having that
>>system up proves nothing about the stability of the current release of
>>Linux.
>
>Hmmm...kinda hard for me to have an "uptime" dating back to Oct of last year,
>I've been running Linux 0.99p7 since it came out, and the only down time
>was when I took it down was to install OS/2 2.0. Otherwise its been up and
>running X, TCP/IP, NFS, etc... and developing code to do some serious number
>crunching (and doing some serious number crunching)...So far Linux has
>been about as stable as any other UNIX I've dealt with (SUNOS, AIX, HP-UX).
>
>John
>
I think you have to realize a few things (referring to the original poster):
1) Linux isn't that old -- you can't expect that its going to work
perfectly from its very inception. A little while ago I was unwilling
to use it or 386BSD because they were "unstable". I am now running
Linux quite happily.
2) Unlike an older commercial Unix, there are hundreds of people working
on various things for Linux, and posting their work (with SOURCE) on the
net on a regular basis. Many people (myself among them) reboot simply to
try out a new version of the kernel, or a different init. I've been in the
habit of not rebooting my box unless I'm trying out a new kernel. And thus
far I've not "needed" to upgrade the kernel. The only "necessary" upgrade
I made so far was to upgrade my shared libs back when libc.4.3.2 came out.
The majority of the Linux group are hackers, and we like futzing around with
the system. Most of us wouldn't let even a "stable" OS go that long without
upgrading device drivers, or inits, or doing something worthy of a reboot.
3) Until Linux version "1.0" comes out, no one is "promising" a stable system.
We are only reporting our own experiences. It is very likely that no one will
ever "promise" a "stable" Linux system. Change is a fundamental part of
improvement. If you have systems that haven't been restarted since Oct. 1992,
probably you're administrators are not working very hard at doing what they're
getting paid to do. I have a difficult time believing *any* UN*X system is so
perfect that somebody isn't going to need or want to reboot, if just to add a
device driver. I wonder what upgrades or fixes your sysadmins have missed?
I do realize that in a production environment, the "if it ain't broke..."
philiosophy is a driving force, but Linux is intended as a "research" vehicle,
and that philosophy doesn't make sense for the Linux owner.
====================================================================
Garrett D'Amore | garrett@sba70.berkeley.edu
Software Co-Ordinator | 68 Barrows Hall, UC Berkeley
Haas Computing Services | Ph: 510-643-5923 Fax: 642-4769
====================================================================