Re: [LAU] mute laptop speakers with Intel HDA

Takashi Iwai wrote:
> At Mon, 06 Aug 2007 23:10:00 -1000,
> david wrote:
>> Arnold Krille wrote:
>>> Am Montag, 6. August 2007 schrieb Fons Adriaensen:
>>>> I assume most drivers are using the same interfaces to the
>>>> kernel, and the same services, and that these are relatively
>>>> stable.
>>>> But I could be completely wrong...
>>> Well, the kernel devs seem to change some interfaces rather often in binary
>>> incompatible ways. And sometimes even on purpose (to drive away blob-drivers
>>> like nvidia)...
>>>
>>> So it can be that one of these changes introduced a bug hard to find and
>>> affecting only very few drivers. And as the developers will probably all have
>>> the lastest kernels, they don't want to wast time by debugging a problem
>>> fixed two kernel versions ago just because the user has 2.6.4 installed and
>>> doesn't use a half decent distro...
>> Note: a decent distro (I've used several) doesn't necessarily have the
>> "latest" kernel - cuz the latest may still be in the very unstable realm.
>
> No more true. Distros nowadays try to pick up the latest one as much
> as possible. Take a look at recent openSUSE, Ubuntu, etc.
> Of course, it's adventurous to switch to early -rc kernel. But the
> released kernel is supposed to be stable. This reduces the
> maintenance a lot.
>
> However, distros stick with the older kernel version for their
> "business" products, mainly for keeping the 100% binary and source
> compatibility, which many ISVs prefer.
> IOW, it's just the matter of money :)

Well, I don't run any business distros.

>> I know I've switched to newer kernels in the past and had whole bunches
>> of devices quit working - for instance, had USB quit working completely.
>> On one, networking quit working entirely, too. So when some developer
>> tells me to "test again using the latest kernel," perhaps you understand
>> why I'm not exactly eager to go do that?
>
> Yeah, I can understand it, of course. I have a bunch of machines with
> older kernels, too. But, you understand that if no report back from
> the tester, the bug will be left simply broken? Testing is a part of
> development cycle, and testing on the same environment is the
> important factor, as I mentioned.

It effects the developer's ability to duplicate the bug. I think it
behooves the developer to test on the environment the person reports the
bug on.

-- 
David
gnome@email-addr-hidden
authenticity, honesty, community
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