Next Week's Kernel Summit Will Try To Take On The 2038 Problem

[gamerk2]

There should be no 32bit CPUs by then.

Sure there will be. The Motorola 6800k and Intel i386 are still produced simply because they are very power efficient DSP chips. Same with lower end PPC and ARM chips.

At the end of the day, there's really only two solutions: Either force users to use a 64-bit type, or re-index the time type. Both break capability somehow.

[Mat2]

In a student project two-three years ago I have made a GPS tracker on an 8-bit ATmega. So 32-bit processors will probably live till 2100.

[Cthulhux]

It must be pretty hard for them Linuxers to see that OpenBSD was first in quite anything.

[endman]

It must be pretty hard for them Linuxers to see that OpenBSD was first in quite anything.

Unlike OpenBSD or NetBSD or whatever ShitBSD, Linux developers are concerned with keeping Linux still usable after solving the 2038 problem.

It sounds like you have never tried OpenBSD 5.5. It's virtually unusable due to the reckless things OpenBSD lunies did to "solve" the 2038 problem. More then half the ports that do worked previously do not work in this release and more crash randomly. Examples include eclipse, netbeans, qtcreator, geany, etc.

Linux developers are the ones solving the 2038 problem properly. The BSDs are still behind Linux on this and they'll never catch up.

[Cthulhux]

I use OpenBSD 5.6 where everything works well. Can't see your point.

[endman]

I use OpenBSD 5.6 where everything works well. Can't see your point.

You are a half-brain troll. OpenBSD 5.6 does not exists yet. It's supposedly due to come out of the closet in November. Aren't you using Mac OSX and/or Windows cause that's what BSD "users" use.

[Cthulhux]

Uhm, yes, I use Mac OS X 5.6. Or Windows 5.6. Or both of them.

No, actually I use OpenBSD-CURRENT. It was 5.5-CURRENT after the time_t switch (and everything worked perfectly), it's 5.6-CURRENT now. Grab the non-existing OpenBSD 5.6 here and tell me what's unusable there.

[Paddy Landau]

From the article:

For those out of the loop?

It's the same thing as the Y2K problem back in 2000, isn't it? Fortunately, unlike Y2K, a fix to the kernel and recompiling some programs should solve the problem.

They might make up 0.000000000.........1 percent of computers?

Ha ha! So, one out of every 100 quintillion computers? I didn't realise that that many could exist ? roughly as many as atoms in a grain of sand. Unless you meant fewer zeroes and dots, LOL. But, yes, I agree that it's a safe bet that a number of computers may still be running 32-bit Linux; perhaps a few satellites and space vessels; watches; alarm systems; and more. 2038 is only 24 years away.