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Message-ID: <20100915045222.GA20654@1wt.eu> Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 06:52:22 +0200 From: Willy Tarreau <w@....eu> To: Yuhong Bao <yuhongbao_386@...mail.com> Cc: linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org Subject: Re: Linux 2.4.37.10 + 2.4 EOL plans On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 03:19:54PM -0700, Yuhong Bao wrote: > > OK, I will bite. > Why are you still using kernel 2.4? One word : stability. Many people don't need all the fancy new features of 2.6 and can't afford to reboot their systems every two weeks to apply the last bunch of fixes. It's quite common to encounter 2.4 systems with 2 years of uptime in production. Some users even ship it in embedded products where it's impossible to update the system after it's shipped (no internet connectivity). With 2.4, they're assured they won't encounter stability problems. Some other users still use it for security reasons. 2.6 offers a wider attack vector range and in practice, new locally exploitable vulnerabilities are discovered every few weeks-months. I'm not saying that there aren't on 2.4, but since the code is frozen, it's been long since we last got one and there's no reason to introduce new ones. In fact, 2.4 is now occupying a similar place as OpenBSD : the type of system you install once and never touch anymore. Regards, Willy -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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