In <1992Aug6.125441.22427@klaava.Helsinki.FI> wirzeniu@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Lars Wirzenius) writes:

quoted text
>Kenneth Falck raises the question of whether Linux should
>stabilize a bit when 1.0 is released.  The same concern has been
>raised by others earlier, as well.  (Another related question is
>what exactly 1.0 should include, but I shan't go into that very
>much, I'm currently more interested in more general qualities.)

 I have to agree with Lars completely on this.  He brings up some
very good points.

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>We'll let the kernel evolve towards what we want 1.0 to be, at
>least featurewise.  After we reach a point where all the features
>we want are present, we freeze that version of the kernel as 0.99,
>and refuse to put in new features (unless they are essential). 

 Yes, we need to specify what features would be nice in this v1.0.
And then not deviate too much from the feature list, just perform
bug fixes, to help stablize it.

 Obviously, people should be encouraged to work on new featureful
ideas, but keep these as a parallel development to be included in
v1.1, or whatever.

 I'd like to see something out by Jan93, maybe.  I think it advisable
that we not get into a situation like Commodore's AmigaDOS 2.04.  This
started out as a v1.4 which will be out by Spring '89, and then into
a v2.0 for final release in '90, and ended up as 2.04 and didn't get
released to the general public until fall '91.  While I was not an
Amiga developer, it sounded like it had a creeping feature syndrome, and
they kept adding stuff and testing became quite a burden.

 The problem with this scenario, is that while people are waiting and waiting
for the stabilized release, they are more likely to loose interest, and go
do something else.  I'd like to bait & hook a few more people, and show
them the wonders of *nix, which I am just now getting to know myself.

quoted text
>After the kernel has been tested thoroughly, for a few weeks or
>so, and all the major bugs have been fixed, we release it as 1.0. 
>Then we consider this as the baseline, and create one official
>release that is easy to install, easy to administer, contains
>everything necessary and a lot of unnecessary but probably widely
>useful things and package everything neatly.  

 test...test...test...  It's a tough job, but necessary.

quoted text
>This package is what should be called Linux, not just the kernel. 
>Compare with, say, SVR4: it is not just a kernel, but a whole
>bunch of software.  Also the whole package is given its own
>version number, instead of using the kernel's version number as is
>currently done. 

 Yes, most definitely.  A package which all you need to do is stick a 
boot disk into the machine, and walk you thru the install.  Much like
any of these commercial Unixes, SCO, Dell, etc.
 I'd love to see a full package which included the administration utilities,
the documentation, manual pages, networking software, X386, etc.  Only
install what you want/need.

 I'd also like to see as part of this "release" a couple of "manuals"
which the user could print out from the DOS side.  Something that
is nicely formatted, and ready to copy to the printer.  An "installation
guide", and a "user's guide".  The installation guide would go step
by step thru the installation, and the user's guide would describe just
what is included in the package, and go over some of the basics of unix, 
as well as basic setup and administration.  There are thousands of pages
already written on Unix, and I don't expect we could cover everything.
But certainly the basics, and the things specific to Unix.
 
 Perhaps it would be a good idea to continue a discussion on what features
we should realistically expect to include in v1.0?  And work towards that
goal.