Comments on: zen-sources again on Gentoo

By: mithrandir

mithrandir — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:17:29 +0000

I´m really happy, that zen development continues. I´m using zen-sources on several machines and zen-kernels always felt faster than stock or vanilla kernels. Well, and of course they had more features.

Thanks for adding zen sources to portage. For a while I posted ebuilds for zen sources in my blog on http://www.mygnu.de . Now I don´t have to anymore :)

mithrandir

By: CC

CC — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 02:26:20 +0000

I’d also suggest that kernels like mm-sources could be removed, mm patches are no longer made – but mmotm (mm of the moment) is still updated on a weekly/bi-weekly basis. The mmotm.git repository is also hosted on zen-kernel.org (which automatically updates to the latest mmotm snapshot and shows each patch as a commit and what not)

I’m not so sure about git kernel ebuilds, but mm should probably be lost (i can’t possibly see anybody using it in reality, especially the old patches)

By: CC

CC — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 02:18:07 +0000

It’s back at zen-kernel.org, thanks

And zen is certainly not an unstable kernel (unstable things have moved to a separate git tree) – Things have been stabilized in the zen-stable.git tree, and it includes a lot of code that developers want tested and that users want. And besides that fact, the linux kernel is not made for desktop usage – the zen kernel strives to be to the best of its ability for desktop usage, it will not benefit a production or server system.

Most bug reports received are related to problems found in the upstream kernel ANYWAY. There is at least 1 distribution who uses zen-stable as it’s DEFAULT kernel, and a couple others that offer it as options. Basically, stability is there. (check the git tree, not just a few comments)

Anyway, it’s supported by multiple kernel developers that are aware of its existence (those who are trying to push code into the linux kernel LOVE it because it provides a testing ground) – the userbase is somewhat large as well, the ratio of users to the ratio of bug reports is very positive (for zen-stable), zen.git is not advised to be used.

And just for the record, with the BFS cpu scheduler (1/2 the code of CFS) and the BFQ i/o scheduler you dont get just “.034MB/sec”, it’s significant improvements almost all the way across the board in desktop situations. If I felt it was worthless I would not have mentioned it, it’s part of proving how bad the linux kernel is for desktops.

Thanks guys, and Markos!

By: Markos

Markos — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 16:56:59 +0000

Indeed those are very sad news. The project it self it is not dead. I really really hope that the rest of developers will move it to a new domain soon. Many of us have the git repos cloned so the actual work is not lost. I hope they will get over it and get back online again

So for now, I had to mask zen-sources ebuilds :(

Sorry folks

By: RealNC

RealNC — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:01:12 +0000

That’s good news and bad news at the same time. The good news is that it’s not really dead as I first thought. The bad side about it should be obvious :P

By: nightmorph

nightmorph — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 11:47:25 +0000

Well, I guess the whole thing is moot, unless someone revives the project under a different name. Here's the forum thread with all the ugly bickering and sordid drama: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-797741.html Two days after posting about the new zen-sources mailing list, the founder took it offline.

By: RealNC

RealNC — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 05:17:25 +0000

The upstream server is down, http://www.zen-sources.org is gone and it says “Zen-Sources is dead!” So not sure if including a dead project in Gentoo is such a terribly good idea :P