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charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-bounce-key: webpack.hosteurope.de;linux@leemhuis.info;1768556568;644dc6ad; X-HE-SMSGID: 1vggLn-000Q64-14 On 1/14/26 06:02, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote: > On 1/13/26 17:07, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote: > >> I thought about this for a while, but in the end I this section and the >> one from 4/30 are worth it. > > And having slept about this once more, I after my reply yesterday now > think it might be wise to merge the important parts from 4/30 into this > patch -- that should get things shorter and still get across chat I care > about. Sorry, took me a moment to realize that. FYI, wrote something new (see below) which is even a few lines shorter than what is in the document right now, yeah. :-D Ciao, Thorsten --- Appendix: Why it's harder to report kernel bugs =============================================== The developers are well aware that reporting Linux kernel bugs is harder than in other Free/Libre Open Source Projects. Many reasons for that lie in the nature of the kernel, its development model, and how the world uses it: * *Most kernels of Linux distributions are totally unsuitable for reporting bugs upstream.* The reference section above already explained this in detail: outdated codebases as well as modifications and add-ons lead to kernel bugs that were fixed upstream a long time ago or never happened there in the first place. Developers of other Open Source software face these problems as well, but the situation is a lot worse when it comes to the Linux kernel, as the changes and their impact are much more severe -- which is why many developers expect reports with kernels built from fresh and nearly unmodified sources. * *Bugs often only occur in a special environment.* That is because Linux is mostly drivers and can be used in a multitude of ways. Developers often do not have a matching setup at hand -- and therefore frequently have to rely on bug reporters for isolating a bug's cause and testing proposed fixes. * *The kernel has hundreds of maintainers, and all-rounders are extremely rare.* This is also due to the multitude of drivers and features, which is why many know little about areas related to their code and even less about unrelated. * *It is hard finding where to report issues to, among others, due to the lack of a central bug tracker.* This is something even some kernel developers dislike, but that's the situation everyone has to deal with currently. * *Stable and longterm kernels are primarily maintained by a dedicated 'stable team', which usually is forbidden to fix bugs just there that happen in mainline, too.* The team thus will almost always want to know if mainline is also affected when someone reports a bug, say, using Linux 6.1.2: if it already happened in 6.1 and still occurs with 6.2-rc1, it is best left to the regular developers, as they know the area best. * *Kernel developers are free to solely focus on the latest mainline kernel.* Some developers, therefore, ignore or react coldly to reports about bugs in, say, Linux 6.1 when 6.2-rc1 is already out; a similar reaction might occur when it comes to reports with 6.1.1 or 6.1.2, as the stable team might have caused the breakage. * *There might be nobody to help.* That can happen due to the lack of hardware documentation -- for example, when a driver was built using reverse engineering or taken over by spare-time developers when the hardware manufacturer left it behind. Other times there is nobody to even report bugs to: when maintainers move on without a replacement, their code often remains as long as it's useful. Some of these aspects could be improved to facilitate bug reporting -- many Linux kernel developers are well aware of this and would be glad if a few individuals or an entity would make this their mission.