KernelNattyVersionAndFlavours

Revision 7 as of 2010-10-22 13:11:50

Clear message

Summary

Discuss the mainline baseline version for Natty. Also discuss the current kernel flavours for each architecture. We will also discuss the source branch for these flavours. Finally we will touch on the ports architectures.

Release Note

None.

Kernel Version

Discussions on which mainline kernel base is appropriate for Natty. As Natty is not an LTS we do not require a specific version for alignment upstream. Therefore we will be using the latest version released at kernel freeze.

Flavours

Are we carrying the appropriate flavours?

Current Flavours

Distro

Architecture

Flavour

Description

i386

generic

kernel for desktop machines with less than 4GB of ram

i386

generic-pae

kernel for desktop machines with more than 4GB of ram

i386

virtual

kernel for virtual machine use (KVM/EC2)

amd64

generic

kernel for desktop machines

amd64

server

kernel for server machines

amd64

virtual

kernel for virtual machine use (KVM/EC2)

armel

versatile

kernel for ARM versatile (QEMU)

armel

omap

kernel for ARM OMAP-3 hardware

Ports

Architecture

Flavour

Description

powerpc

powerpc

PowerPC

powerpc

powerpc-smp

PowerPC with SMP support

powerpc

powerpc64-smp

PowerPC64 with SMP support

New Flavours

64bit kernels on 32bit userspace (amd64 on i386)

We have had a number of requests for a 64 bit kernel (amd64) for 32 bit (i386) installs. This gives the user the advantages of running 64 bit in terms of kernel memory handling improvements while maintaining the 32 bit userspace which remains more compatible with 3rd party applications.

Flavour Source Disposition

In Maverick the master branch produced two ARM flavours, versatile and OMAP3. With Linaro also producing OMAP3 kernels it may be appropriate to switch the source of these kernels over to that kernel; even if we do not it may be appropriate to pull out this into its own branch.

Ports Architectures

As ia64 and sparc are now officially dead we are only carrying powerpc as a ports architecute. As the source is now carried primarily on the master branch is there any longer any value in treating this differently. Specifically should we be pulling back the ports meta package into the main one to simplify maintenance.

BoF agenda and discussion

  • Kernel Version
  • Flavours
    • review of the current flavours distro and ports
  • Proposed new Flavours
    • 64bit kernel for 32bit userspace (amd64 kernel on i386)
  • Flavour source disposition
    • OMAP3 should this be split out from the master branch
      • can we pull this from linaro instead
  • PORTS architectures
    • should we pull powerpc meta package back into the master repos

Decisions


CategorySpec