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Linux 2.6.22 Kernel Released

Posted by kdawson on Mon Jul 09, 2007 04:33 AM
from the when-you-must-have-the-latest dept.
Software Linux
An anonymous reader writes "Linux creator Linus Torvalds announced the official release of the 2.6.22 kernel: 'It's out there now (or at least in the process of mirroring out — if you don't see everything, give it a bit of time).' The previous stable kernel, 2.6.21, was released a little over two months ago. New features in the 2.6.22 kernel include a SLUB allocator which replaces the slab allocator, a new wireless stack, a new Firewire stack, and support for the Blackfin architecture. Source-level changes can be tracked via the gitweb interface to Linus' kernel tree."
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  • Seriously, what the fuck is going on with slashdot?

    I've read & reread the linked articles, and not a single mention of the iPhone - and it's been over 48 hours since an iPhone story. Seriously - it's like slashdot's turned into a linux site, instead of an iPhone site.

    Let's not forget our roots folks - just because linux is the big hype story today.

  • SLUB much better than slab (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2007, @04:54AM (#19797891)
    Great improvement! SLUB is obviously better than slab, since it's all uppercase. I get a lot of emails these days using uppercase to distinguish their importance. I think it's a good thing the linux community is catching on to this IT trend.

  • Anybody (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jaaay (1124197) on Monday July 09 2007, @05:01AM (#19797927)
    have any information on how good the new wireless stack is? That's what I'm most interested in.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by iabervon (1971)
      From a user perspective, it doesn't matter, but a number of drivers for releatively new hardware have been written to use it, which means that there will probably be a bunch more wireless cards supported by the mainstream kernel in the next few versions, and one fewer step to get drivers in 2.6.22. For example, Intel has a new driver for their a/b/g card that doesn't require a userspace regulatory daemon or anything (the firmware takes care of all of that), and this driver uses the new stack; they have plan

      • Re:Anybody (Score:4, Informative)

        by b1ufox (987621) on Monday July 09 2007, @07:13AM (#19798651) Homepage Journal
        Current firewire stack is way too small in size as compared to old firewire stack.

        Second now there are less threads in the firewire subsystem, which is indeed good because kernel threads are really really a very stupid idea.

        Last but not the least i have used TI firewire chipset with Basler IEE1394 cameras under Linux and trust me they knock teeth out of Windows Firewire stack.It was good and performed good even with two cameras working in real time image inspections.

        I suspect the current stack is going to work atleast similar if not better, though i ll bet on it being better.This is a good sign also, as there is no point in patching things but point is in writing the whole messy thing again.And here we are.... hey wait TTY layer ...any takers? please :-)

  • But is disk IO fixed on amd64? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For anyone in the dark, disk IO has been broken sometime after 2.6.17 on amd64.
    I thought I was going crazy, being on 2.6.18 and discovering that any disk activity slows down the whole system, let alone accesses to any other disk.

    Then I found a 19-page thread on the gentoo forums that says I'm not alone and it's not unique to a particular chipset:
    http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-482731-start- 450.html [gentoo.org]
    (with evidence that the deadline scheduler may alleviate _some_ of the problem but not the root cause)

    And
    • Follow the links above if you really want to see how the above poster is misrepresenting things to embrace a much larger picture - it's clear whoever modded them up did not.

      Specific complaints should be stated as such instead of rubbish about it all being broken. The Gentoo thread quoted above is about people discovering that writing to optical drives is horribly slow and puts a lot of load on the CPU in comparison to dealing with hard disks - looking up ATAPI may have been a good move at that point inste

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by cerberusss (660701)

      Why can't we have a 2.7 kernel for this stuff?

      So, why the trolling at the end of an otherwise good post? I'll quote Wikipedia for the people who have been living under a rock since 2.4:

      The development model for Linux 2.6 was a significant change from the development model for Linux 2.5. Previously there was a stable branch (2.4) where only relatively minor and safe changes were merged, and an unstable branch (2.5), where bigger changes and cleanups were allowed. This meant that users would always have a we

        • "Because Linus said so" is in fact not a particularly valid answer. Yes, Linus has the right to choose the development structure the kernel is now using, but that doesn't mean it is the best way to do it for everybody. dropping the distinction between "stable" and "development" versions was a sloppy, lazy move that simply pushed the responsibility for maintaining stable released off onto the distributors. That has essentially duplicated the work a hundred-fold, because each distribution must do the work themselves. We're told that this is a "better" arrangement, but it is clearly only better for Linus and the kernel developers, because they get to do less work and be lazy when it comes to making changes: "Want to rip out the allocator and replace it with a largely untested one? Sure, why not! Making sure everything works is the distributors problem, not ours!"

          Except that the old system didn't work at all. There were just too many changes to stabilize in any reasonable amount of time and while the debugging was happening the 2.4.x kernel was becoming so badly out of date that people (and distros) tried to back port changes from the 2.5.x tree.

          The result was TWO unstable kernel trees and the vendor trees had a tendency to be even worse. The old system would have left those people using SATA in a worse situation then they are in now. Keep in mind that SATA came out after 2.6.x so the drivers would right now be somewhere in the 2.7.x series kernel still waiting to be debugged and the stable maintainers would be forced to try and backport the SATA drivers once again resulting in two unstable kernels

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by gmack (197796)

              IMO there is nothing wrong with backporting new drivers (which should only affect people who use the hardware for which the new drivers are designed, not any other users of the kernel) into a stable kernel tree.

              Except that in this thread people have been blaming the SATA problems on the new development method but in this case there would have been no difference.

              The downside to backporting was that the differences between 2.4.x and 2.5.x were so large that the driver interfaces had a tendency to be com

  • Linux 3.0.0 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Colin Smith (2679) on Monday July 09 2007, @05:47AM (#19798127)
    Ok. You have a major release, it's permission to break all backwards compatibility, to completely change the face of computing.

    Given the hardware around. What features should Linux 3.0.0 have?

     

    • Re:Linux 3.0.0 (Score:5, Funny)

      by backwardMechanic (959818) on Monday July 09 2007, @06:08AM (#19798241) Homepage
      iPhone support?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MichaelSmith (789609)

      Given the hardware around. What features should Linux 3.0.0 have?

      • The ability to scale from supercomputers, mainframes to handhelds, without recompilation
      • Transparent clustering. Run this process somewhere else with as much or as little user control is a required
      • Fine grained security. Maybe something which lets you build a userland which can't be exploited in any way shape or form
      • Built in support for virtual machines. Something like java in the kernel
      • Better APIs for kernel modules. Being able to run some modules in a real sandbox

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by b1ufox (987621)
        > * The ability to scale from supercomputers, mainframes to handhelds, without recompilation

        Thats next to impossible for a modern fairly efficient operating system. Why? Because kernels which run on handhelds , supercomputers and mainframes have different constraints in terms of memory, power management and similar technical terminological stuff :).

        > * Transparent clustering. Run this process somewhere else with as much or as little user control is a required

        Oh boy!!! this is how SMP kernels wor

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by LuckyStarr (12445)
      Easy. I'd like it to have these features [wikipedia.org] of course.

      Though they gradually sneak into Linux anyway. So no big deal.
    • Here [lkml.org] you go.

      It's going to be a microkernel using a special message-passing version of Visual Basic.
      • JFS is one of the better linux filesystems. And while you can't select it in the installer, you can definitely install the tools to support JFS from universe in Kubuntu, and it's similarly available in the Fedora base repositories. The kernels come with the modules pre-built already, so...

        And you can shrink and grow them. And it has nice backup and fsck utilities... Oh, and it supports extended attributes and ACLs and all that good stuff. And it's faster than XFS.

        So use it!
  • To quote from the bottom of the page: [The mm-tree] can crash your machine, eat your data (unlikely but not impossible) or kidnap your family (just because it has never happened it doesn't mean you're safe)

    I notice the patches being tested include Reiser 4...suddenly the above warning appears a bit more sinister.
    • Dude, Google is your friend: http://lwn.net/Articles/229984/ [lwn.net]

    • Re:What's SLUB? (Score:5, Informative)

      by b1ufox (987621) on Monday July 09 2007, @04:52AM (#19797877) Homepage Journal
      http://lwn.net/Articles/229984/ [lwn.net]

      There for you, help yourself.

      BTW in short plain english, it adds some voodoo stuff to struct page, removes a lot of metadata cruft from the slab allocator, adds lesser and simple locking after removing most of locks which are not required because of the changes in the cache layer.

      So if you are running your kernel on a huge farm of processors of the order of thousand(s), you ll find a remarkable memory saving, which is a big overhead in slab allocation.

      HTH

      • Re:What's SLUB? (Score:5, Funny)

        by hmallett (531047) on Monday July 09 2007, @05:58AM (#19798177) Homepage

        it adds some voodoo stuff to struct page

        I believe that brings the amount of the Linux kernel containing Voodoo to 13%.

        • I believe that brings the amount of the Linux kernel containing Voodoo to 13%.

          Yeah, here's the breakdown of the 2.6.22-generic (Linus' kernel) source from krnl-magick-analyzer:


          $ krnl-magick-analyzer --percentages --nice-format
          Linux Kernel Magick Analyzer v0.01 -- Monday, July 9, 2007 8:30 AM DST

          Linux Kernel Version: 2.6.22
          Path: /usr/src/linux-2.6.22

          High Magick 10%
          Santeria (w/o chicken sacrifices) 5%
          Santeria (w/chicken sacrifices) 5%
          Witchcraft 8%
          Hoodoo 7%
          Voodoo (Voudon) 13%
          Daemonology 20%
          Other 22%

          • Ah, the GNU/Generation. In Linus/Linux speak:

            # cat /proc/sys/kernel/voodoo
            1: 10 5:5 8 7 13 20 0x00000022

            --
            GNU: A recursive acronym "GNU's Newbie Unix"
    • I dunno.. maybe it means it'll run Linux.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by derrida (918536)
      I think this is just not true (yet). I haven't read anything in the changelogs.

    • Re:GPL v3 (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2007, @05:33AM (#19798063)
      Some other possibly unnoticed effects of the GPLv3 include:
      - You can't use a CPU of the same manufacturer that has previously executed GPLv3 code in the same room as a computer running a Microsoft operating system. If you have exhausted all the alternatives and you still need to run your GPLv3-infected hardware in the same room, you can negate this by drawing a chalk circle around the machines running the MS software and sprinkling a ground-up printed copy of the GPLv3 over and around them. This is all standard as per Section 5.
      - In the case the Richard Stallman's or any of his buddies' computer blows up (for any reason - read the license for full details), he's allowed to walk into your house and take your computer right off your desk and keep it, even if it has never run GPLv3 code!
      - If left unattended, disks containing copies of the GPLv3 can become corrupted and mutate into GPVv3 (General Public Virus version 3), which will assimilate all carbon and silicon-based matter with in a 3 mile radius into a demonic, electronic, GPLv3 spreading zombie ox (or it might be a buffalo - that part is unclear).

      This is why we should all boycott GPLv3. It is just too evil and virusy.

    • The fact that you were modded up informative really shows that somebody is out here doing a a REAL FUD jobber. Few here, would say that if the kernel did switch to GPL3, that it would not even have a mention in the posting. That means that the modders are deliberate, not just ignorant. Considering that they are modding, shows that most of the time, they do not step off the deep end. That pretty much means that several ppl (30% informative), are most likely on a payroll.
        • Linus has repeatedly stated that his code will not be converted to GPLv3. You are either grossly misinformed, or on someone's payroll. If so, they are not getting their money's worth.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I don't understand 70% of the changes listed and don't care about/don't use the rest of them. I know, I know... I must be new here. *sigh*

      Not sure why that is modded Insightful and just above that is another user asking which usb device would be best to buy for a linux box, but that is modded "off-topic." I remember when slashdot was about news for geeks and sharing information about geeky things for linux/bsd/etc.. Now it seems like its just about modding up snarky comments and crap articles about

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dpilot (134227)
      Just because you don't understand them or know that you use them doesn't mean that you really don't use or benefit from them.

      Do you know and understand all of the technology in your car? your cell phone?

    • Re:question on the wireless (Score:4, Informative)

      by Technician (215283) on Monday July 09 2007, @06:05AM (#19798221)
      Anyways, I was thinking of adding one of these USB wireless accessories.. could anybody here recommend one that has a good track record of working in linux ?

      I would recommend using one of the PCMCIA cards instead. Find one that uses the Anthros chipset. I picked up a D-LINK one that was recognised by Dapper Drake. I didn't need to install NDIS Wrapper of Network Manager. I don't remember the model number of the card, but setting it up was as easy as setting it up in Windows except I didn't need to use the setup CD that came with it. Dapper recognised it as an Unknown Wireless. Properties showed it has an Anthros chipset made by D-Link. From there I gave it a static IP on my LAN and plugged in the WEP key after picking my SSID from a list. I added some DNS listings and put in the gateway address of my router and I was online. There have been some difficulty with configuring many of the USB cards. Check the forums and purchase carefully.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by MSG (12810)
        I presume you mean "Atheros". I recommend not using those cards. Atheros cards do not have Free Software drivers; they're binary-only. They don't handle suspend well, which is kind of a big issue when you're dealing with a laptop. Ralink or Intel cards are a much better bet.
            • However I am running Kubuntu Feisty. Maybe it's time for an upgrade?

              Probably true. I'm running Dapper because I have a life. I spend little time as a noob putzing with it. I'm more of an end user. I settled on Dapper because it is the LTS version so I wouldn't have to be on the 6 month upgrade cycle.

              Anyway, in a couple years, I'll upgrade. In the meantime I'll enjoy the sunshine and warm weather, camping, etc. When rainy weather sets in and I have time to blow my install and learn how to recover it, I

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by vtcodger (957785)
      *** Anyways, I was thinking of adding one of these USB wireless accessories.. could anybody here recommend one that has a good track record of working in linux ?***

      I'd be careful about anything with a Broadcom chip. There is a Broadcom driver for Linux, but it doesn't always work. The alternative is ndiswrapper which can somehow make a Windows driver work under Linux. My experience was that setting up ndiswrapper was not much fun. Not knocking ndiswrapper -- I'm utterly astounded that it works at all

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Cyberax (705495)
      See http://kerneltrap.org/node/553/2131 [kerneltrap.org] for explanation. In short, Linus has good reasons to use goto.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by vadim_t (324782)
      IMO, goto has been demonized a bit too much.

      Yeah, too much of it results in spaghetti code.

      But used well, it can compensate for the lack of some things in C. For example, exiting nested loops. In Perl you can say "last NAME", where NAME is the name you gave to the loop, and exit from the outer loop directly.

      In C, if you avoid goto what results is a check in every loop to determine whether the inner loop decided that we've got to bail out. This is much uglier than just using goto in the first place, and more

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