Con Kolivas(ck) kernel patch set to be discontinued ?

[praka123]

Sunday, June 17. 2007

The end of the CK kernel patch set

Today kernel developer Con Kolivas announced that he will stop developing his Linux patch which improves desktop performance. For people who have followed recent discussions about his SD CPU scheduler and about the inclusion of his swap prefetching patches in the Linux kernel this will not come as a surprise.
The CK patch set was popular especially amongst desktop users who want to get maximum performance out of their machine. The CK kernel came with a different CPU scheduler (first Staircase, later SD), which improves the smoothness of desktop applications (for example no more sound stuttering), the mapped watermark patches, which makes the OS use less swap, and the swap prefetching patches, which makes the system more responsive after a memory hungry application caused others to be temporarily swapped out. The CK patch set was also used in several distro kernels, such as the Mandriva's tmb kernel and kernels in Gentoo and Arch Linux.
The decision to completely stop kernel development, came after the critical reactions by other kernel developers about the SD scheduler and swap prefetching. After the first releases of the SD kernel, some developers preferred trolling instead of helping out to fix the problems which existed at that time. While the SD scheduler slowly became more and more stable, only thanks to Con Kolivas efforts, a competing scheduler (CFS) which was based on the same concepts, was started. Now that both schedulers are mature and stable, a lot of CK kernel users and Con Kolivas himself are left wondering why it was even necessary to start competing with SD, instead of uniting all powers to make one great scheduler.
Swap prefetching was already proposed for inclusion in the Linux kernel a long time ago. But several developers remained critical, while a lots of users reported improvements by these patches. The patches were included in the mm kernel, but developers did not really review it and proposed it for the mainline kernel. Until Ingo Molnar finally stepped up recently, and gave some positive comments after a code review. Again some developers started criticizing the patch, and the future of this patch became again unclear.
With all this in mind, it's normal that Con Kolivas got fed up with Linux kernel development. It seems some Linux developers really need to do something to improve their communication, and need to be a bit more reasonable and constructive, instead of immediately criticizing one's efforts. This is at least the second kernel developer who got fed up with the way the Linux kernel development goes in a short time.
Developers come and go, that's a normal process. Still I think Con Kolivas' departure could have been avoided. In the end, we can only thank him for his great work, which certainly was not useless. In the end, the CFS scheduler which will be included in Linux owes a lot to Con Kolivas' ideas, and I hope the other patches will find their way to inclusion in other patch sets in way or another.

source:
*artipc10.vub.ac.be/serendipity/archives/32-The-end-of-the-CK-kernel-patch-set.html
*ck.wikia.com/wiki/End_of_ck_patchset
*www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2007-06-18-012-26-NW-KN

just saw in 2.6.21 changelog:

Crashing soon a kernel near you

This is a list of some of the ongoing patches being developed at the kernel community that will be part of future Linux releases. Those features may take many months to get into the Linus' git tree, or may be dropped. The features are tested in the -mm tree, but be warned, it can crash your machine, eat your data (unlikely but not impossible) or kidnap your family (just because it has never happened it doesn't mean you're safe):

• Con Colivas' RSDL process scheduler, which seems to work much better than the stock scheduler according to some reports (LWN article)

*kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_21#head-1e87824aa4636cc57408ac7b268ceb44681781c9
SO what went wrong? I just searched for ck patches after long time.saw this message

again this issues needs to be resolved or Linus is not so particular about other's work

 

[eddie]

Nooooooooooooooooooooo!
This is soooo sad! I just can't express how disappointed I am.
*ck.wikia.com/wiki/End_of_ck_patchset

 

[mehulved]

I used to use the ck-sources kernel sometimes after Satissh and eddie told me about it. It was nice. This is really bad news.

 

[praka123]

{UPDATES}-Why I quit: kernel developer Con Kolivas

Why I quit: kernel developer Con Kolivas

^ An interview with CK-
*apcmag.com/6735/interview_con_kolivas

Recently, however, Con announced he was leaving it all behind. Interested in hearing what prompted the move I contacted Con to talk about the reasons for his leaving, what it takes to be a kernel developer, the future as he sees it.
The response I got was more than I bargained for -- in the conversation that followed, Con explored not just why he left, but also the challenges the Linux kernel must overcome as he sees it, and the very nature of the hardware and software market that led to the computing environment we have today. Whether you're a Windows user or Linux user, he makes some excellent points.
Rather than break up the Con's responses, we're publishing it as it stands. So grab a coffee, make yourself comfortable, and read on.

 

[praka123]

<UPDATE>
Torvalds Explains Scheduler Decision

"There's been a lot of recent debate over why Linus Torvalds chose the new CFS process scheduler written by Ingo Molnar over the SD process scheduler written by Con Kolivas, ranging from discussing the quality of the code to favoritism and outright conspiracy theories. KernelTrap is now reporting Linus Torvalds' official stance as to why he chose the code that he did. 'People who think SD was "perfect" were simply ignoring reality,' Linus is quoted as saying. He goes on to explain that he selected the Completely Fair Scheduler because it had a maintainer who has proven himself willing and able to address problems as they are discovered. In the end, the relevance to normal Linux users is twofold: one is the question as to whether or not the Linux development model is working, and the other is the question as to whether the recently released 2.6.23 kernel will deliver an improved desktop experience."
source:*linux.slashdot.org/linux/07/07/28/1836247.shtml
*kerneltrap.org/node/14002
my thoughts:

Linus is wrong many times.First he bashes and "proclaimed" Gnome is waste without knowing the basic purpose of that DE(simplicity,yet usability,not so into eyecandy but customizable too).
next he is protecting his decisions or partiality done to Con Kolivas.Con is a very respective person with his codes for optimizing codes for Desktop and for years.
Still defending Linus are a fanboy of his personality or a kde fanboy for sure.
For the survival of Linux,Linus needs to be lenient.Con deserves the rights of his idea and work.Ingo looted Con's ideas and claimed the fame.this is sick.Linus- understand all people dont like kde and trolltech/qt(as reg his previous troll).also is his *dictatorship* and appeasement of select developers.
*over*