fedora kernel FAQ

[law at redhat.com]

In message <3FB964C7.6010602 at wanadoo.es>, Xose Vazquez Perez writes:
 >from http://www.codemonkey.org.uk/docs/fedora-faq.txt
 >
 >--cut--
 >Fedora kernel related questions that get asked over and over...
 >
 >Q. Why doesn't Fedora just ship the stock kernel.org kernel ?
 >A. The patches we apply are justified for many reasons.
 >   - Dropping back to a 'known good' version of a driver.
 >   - Updating to a newer version of a driver to whats in mainline
 >     that fixes known bugs but for whatever reason, hasn't made it in yet.
 >   - Backports of fixes from 'pre/rc' release kernels.
 >   - Various new features developed by Red Hat.
 >     NPTL, Exec-Shield etc..
 >   - Various often requested features
 >     laptop-mode for eg.
 >
 >Q. Can I use a stock kernel.org kernel anyway ?
 >A. Yes. But you obviously lose all the 'add ons'.
The key one being NPTL support.  Dropping in a kernel which does not
support NPTL can cause all kinds of headaches.  I ran in this mode for
a short while for various reasons.  Mozilla, OpenOffice, and WINE
consistently wedged.  Presumably this happened because the Fedora versions
actually relied upon Posix compliant things like thread signal delivery
and if you drop in an old kernel you get the old non-compliant signal
delivery behavior.

Jeff