Requiring Linux 3.2, again

[Joseph Myers]

On Thu, 4 May 2017, Carlos O'Donell wrote:

> At a high level I worry about container technology (regardless of the
> choice of framework around namespaces) and the pressure we apply to users
> by moving glibc to require a newer kernel.
> 
> Every time we move glibc to require a newer linux kernel that creates an
> inflection point where users have to upgrade their container host to run
> the newer distribution containers.

Even without glibc requiring a newer kernel, it's entirely plausible that 
some userspace software on new distributions will in fact be relying on 
new kernel features and so fail to work on containers with old host 
kernels unless those features have been backported.  E.g., if it uses 
getrandom (Linux 3.17) and doesn't have a runtime fallback for it being 
unavailable (only maybe e.g. a configure-time fallback for being linked 
with old glibc without the function).

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com