Hello anonymous reader,

"What's the story here? Somebody posted some patches to lkml - big deal. Was there a discussion? No, none at all, at least not according to Kerneltrap's own mailing list archives (yay, another lkml archive! There just weren't enough before). So really, what's the story?"

For me, it's that I spend a significant portion of my life on a Linux powered laptop. Suspend and resume works some of the time, other times I have to power cycle. And so I take interest in anything being done to improve the state of Linux suspend. Personally, I found it intriguing that test functionality like this wasn't built into the solution from the beginning.

As for our LKML archives, quite honestly I wrote them for myself. It saves me a tremendous amount of time in the writing of each article, as I no longer have to manually format the email text included with each article. Is it a perfect system? Nope, not yet. Are there bugs that sometimes cause imperfect formatting? Absolutely. Do I plan to fix them? Sure, when I find the time... Of course, the code involved is GPL'd and freely available, so you're more than welcome to help fix the remaining formatting issues if you have more spare time than I.

"Not that the "article" would likely have been better if there had been a discussion, of course: Kerneltrap unfortunately seems to have degraded from the insightful, informative, interesting and enlightening site it once was where discussions were summed up by an intelligent and knowledgeable writer to one that merely plucks some quotes from an email thread without adding anything and then repeats the entire thread (or parts of it), often not even bothering to get the formatting right or to remove patches etc. that most people won't care about (and those who will will neither need nor use Kerneltrap to look at them)."

But how do you really feel?

Seriously, perhaps you don't appreciate the amount of time maintaining this website requires. I've lost count of how many years I've been doing it, but during that time my life has gone through many changes. Sometimes I'm able to focus more on the website, and I do. Sometimes it's all I can do to clear the spam from its pages every few days.

As for formatting issues, that is not as simple as you make it sound. As often as not, what displays correctly on one browser doesn't display correctly on another -- certainly I test the site occasionally with multiple browsers, but being just a hobby I don't have time to do this with any regularity.

The stories I enjoy writing the most are the interviews. It's fascinating to have a discussion with one of the many incredibly intelligent personalities helping to write and improve the operating systems I use on a daily basis. I also greatly enjoy writing full articles that involve lots of research, writing various people, reading web pages, reading source code and documentation, etc. It's fun. But unfortunately, it also takes a lot of time, which is something I don't have a lot to spare these days. And hence, the flow of original content has inevitably slowed. The website is a hobby I maintain in my spare time, and spare time is a fluid concept. Perhaps if I ever find a way to make KernelTrap pay I'll be able to be more consistent, but until then it remains a hobby.

In the past when I've gotten as busy as I am these days, I've simply dropped my KernelTrap hobby and focused on my own life. Then, when I've found more spare time, I've picked it up again. Sometimes my breaks have been just a few weeks, other times they've been a few months. This time, instead of totally dropping the website I've found a happy medium in which I'm able to update the site regularly without investing the usual hours involved. That this comes across to you as being less intelligent, well, so be it.

KernelTrap is as much an addiction for me as anything else. I enjoy reading the various mailing lists. I enjoy sharing what I've read with other people who would like to read the mailing lists but lack the time. I enjoy the feedback.

"But again, that's assuming that there even IS a discussion to be copied and pasted, which - as noted above - isn't even true anymore in many cases."

I disagree with you that for something from the LKML or another mailing list to be considered interesting, it has to have generated a discussion.

"I remember the 'old' Kerneltrap, myself. I started reading the site when it was still very new, and even contributed to it a bit, 'back in the day', and I really wish that site still existed. But it doesn't - it's been replaced with a dumbed-down, uninformative, irrelevant slop-job that only seems to be intended to generate as many page impressions as possible. In the past, Kerneltrap cared about its readers; it existed to provide kernel-related news, insights and backgrounds on a level above that of Slashdot and similar sites. These days, readers are a product being lured in by hastily posted non-stories and sold to the advertising industry, and even Slashdot provides more information, more insights, more points of interest."

Much of the value of KernelTrap is the community around it that participates by submitting insightful comments and having intelligent conversations. Do you feel slightly hypocritical to complain about how there's no good content anymore, and then to point out that a long time ago you once contributed to the website yourself? KernelTrap is what you make it. I am only one man, but I am always open to contributions from the community...

"I'm sorry, but you're losing me as a reader. For a long time, I've been thinking 'that's ALL?' every single time I read an 'article' on Kerneltrap; I'll give you the benefit of a grace period since I still somehow hope that the site might become interesting again (which, one might add, would ultimately be the better business model, too: Kerneltrap's unique selling point, if you will), but if it doesn't change soon, I'll leave.

"In the meantime, I'll say 'thanks a lot for the old site', and 'good riddance to the new site'."

The site reaches a large and diverse audience. What one reader finds interesting, another doesn't find interesting. What one reader wishes for, another reader wouldn't like or wouldn't understand. Over the years, I've learned it's impossible to make everyone happy. I strive to make the site informative, but obviously for you I've missed the mark. It's easy to criticize, but it's more beneficial to all, yourself included, to contribute and actually help make things better.

Cheers,
-Jeremy

Why do you whine, a bad day? If you don't like Kerneltrap don't read it. I personally like to check it time to time, not (much) unnecessary fluff, just facts. You know what, if you have something to add to any conversation I'm sure everyone would be happy to read it. Take me as an example, never yet commented except now, 35 years memory and I/O development on many platforms and sometimes I don't agree with Linux kernel people BUT they have the whole picture, I don't, so I learn. So I have resisted commenting, maybe should?, and sooner or later they have a "better" solution for Linux than I could come up. I might create an argument and maybe it could help but it also could distract. I see some posts which definitely don't belong here but hey, we all have to learn and as long this doesn't turn to next Slashdot, I'm happy. And Jeremy already gave you a good answer why he does this. By the way, why Anonymous ? And trust me, when/if I have strong opinion you will see it here, until now everything seems going well without my stupid/uneducated opinions even I'm known of those.