> Speak now or I won't be able to consider your opinion.
I think it is very important to consider the 'production' environment
and the (b)leading edge development environment as completely
separate. Personally I consider myself in the first category: I'm
member of the OZ7SAT PacSat group and our goal is to develop an
automated (i.e. unattended) satellite ground station. For this we
need a stable platform, and we have opted for Linux as the platform
for our software development and have not been disappointed so far. The
installation of the AX.25 utilities (and the SCC driver) went smoothly and
according to 'the book' (HOWTO). We consider Linux, the AX.25 utilities
etc. as a means to an end rather than a goal in itself.
Having read about all the trouble and problems you may run into when
trying to apply the 2.1.x kernel versions and the accompanying
utilities, I'm glad that we did not have to cope with the
idiosyncrasies of the 2.1.x environment. I guess we would have spent a
considerable amount of time just to get a running Linux system. Our
decision to stay with the 2.0.x kernel version (presently 2.0.24) has
given us the stable platform we need without any hassle.
Therefore I recommend that you first and foremost maintain the
'production' environment (kernel version 2.0.x - utilities version
2.0.12x) and secondly that you maintain whatever is needed in order to
provide a coherent environment for people using the 2.1.x kernels. I
see no need to have hybrids such as the proposed 2.0.x kernel patches.
Best 73 de Bent/OZ6BL
(also rztlja@trucjedoen.nl)