state of Fedora kernel and Desktop use?

[Chris Snook]

Valent Turkovic wrote:
> Hi devels & all,
> I'll be brief so not to take much of your time.
> 
> I read this article [1] about general Linux kernel development and how
> desktop use is ignored by mainstream kernel developers, and how
> desktop performance is suffering because of that.
> 
> I took out this quote to summarize:
> "I think the kernel developers at large haven't got the faintest idea
> just how big the problems in userspace are. It is a very small brave
> minority that are happy to post to lkml, and I keep getting users
> telling me on IRC, in person, and via my own mailing list, what their
> problems are. And they've even become fearful of me, even though I've
> never viewed myself as a real kernel developer."
> 
> What is the status of Fedora kernel regarding specific patches that
> make desktop perform better? Is is true that mostly big vendor issues
> get resolved and that kernel devels don't care enough for desktop
> users?
> 
> Cheers,
> Valent.
> 
> [1] http://apcmag.com/interview_with_con_kolivas_part_1_computing_is_boring.htm
> 

We do plenty of desktop optimization.  Con Kolivas was whining because we were 
being conservative about desktop optimizations that had a high risk of harming 
enterprise workloads, but the truth is that we're conservative about all 
optimizations that have a high risk of harming *any* workload, which is how we 
should be.

As for specific patches, we try to keep as close in sync with upstream as 
possible.  Fedora-specific patches are more likely to be features that aren't 
quite ready for the vast range of kernel configurations possible upstream, but 
we're confident of in the limited configurations we use in Fedora.  Performance 
optimizations tend to track rather closely.  Some distributions use experimental 
patches that haven't been merged upstream to optimize for some specific 
workload, but Fedora is used far too widely for that, and the payoff of those 
patches is generally rather small anyway.  For things that make a huge 
difference, there's enough motivation to get them upstream quickly, so we get 
them quickly too.

-- Chris