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Linux 2.6.26 Out
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Jul 14, 2008 09:21 AM
from the kernel-about-town dept.
from the kernel-about-town dept.
diegocgteleline.es writes "After three months, Linux 2.6.26 has been released. It adds support for read-only bind mounts, x86 PAT (Page Attribute Tables), PCI Express ASPM (Active State Power Management), ports of KVM to IA64, S390 and PPC, other KVM improvements including basic paravirtualization support, preliminary support of the future 802.11s wireless mesh standard, much improved webcam support thanks to a driver for UVC devices, a built-in memory tester, a kernel debugger, BDI statistics and parameters exposure in /sys/class/bdi, a new /proc/PID/mountinfo file for more accurate information about mounts, per-process securebits, device white-list for containers users, support for the OLPC, some new drivers and many small improvements. Here is the full list of changes."
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Does it disturb anyone else? (Score:3, Funny)
Does it disturb anyone else how many words the bsdm & linux kernel community have in common? (this is not a troll).
Frankly, I blame IBM.
Re:Does it disturb anyone else? (Score:5, Funny)
Nah, SATA gets rid of all that. No more master and slave. Now, we submit to the controller.
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Re:Does it disturb anyone else? (Score:5, Funny)
Nah, SATA gets rid of all that. No more master and slave. Now, we submit to the controller.
Actually, submitting to the controller is redundant. I guess that makes the above a joke within a joke for those who thought otherwise. From the relevant Wiki article [wikipedia.org]:
And because SATA presents the ATA interface to the system (the difference being how the chips are connected to the drive), you could say there's an additional joke in there, but one only those using SCSI would find funny.
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Re:Does it disturb anyone else? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does it disturb anyone else how many words the bsdm & linux kernel community have in common? (this is not a troll).
Frankly, I blame IBM.
Well, the kernel sources are (or were) pretty explicit in their sexual deviations. I remember several occurrences of the following comment: /* Fuck me gently with a chainsaw... */ in the 2.4 tree.
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Intelfb still broke (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Intelfb still broke (Score:4, Insightful)
They have still not enabled mode switching in the intelfb driver on laptops
Do any desktops really need a fb, or is it only so that there can be pretty pictures during boot, before [xkg]dm starts?
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Re:Intelfb still broke (Score:5, Insightful)
It's actually useful if you, for some reason, need to drop to a text console and do something there (like restarting a firefox that started running amok an hour ago and now has all the system resources taken). I like my console to use the exact resolution of the laptop screen so that there are no weird pixels and, as a nice plus, the screen can fit a lot more text.
Having a 900x1024 screen and a text mode that's about 480x640 pixels and 24x80 is kind of ugly.
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Re:Intelfb still broke (Score:5, Informative)
It's coming in 2.6.27 along with the GEM branch that was merged into master. Read Phoronix if you're into this sort of thing.
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Clever new tools for kernel config (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Clever new tools for kernel config (Score:5, Interesting)
Aye - would be great if there would be tool that I could eg. say "Ok, right now, at this moment, I have all my hot-pluggable USB/PCI devices plugged in, please detect and configure the options as needed". After all, that's what I do with a new comp: use lspci and similar tools to find out what's in the guts of the machine and then set options appropriately in menuconfig.
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Re:Clever new tools for kernel config (Score:4, Insightful)
um... you have a distro that doesn't hotplug all the necessary modules for you?
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Re:Clever new tools for kernel config (Score:5, Funny)
1. make randconfig
2. Compile, install and boot the kernel
3. If your system doesn't boot or lacks a driver, goto 1.
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Good Featurelist (Score:5, Informative)
I wish every kernel release announcement included a highlevel featurelist like that. Not just a ChangeLog, as each bug is fixed or small feature is added. But rather a fairly highlevel list of new and improved (and fixed) features like the one in this Slashdot story. Best if in the announcement itself, but at the very least always in the release package.
That way most of us can decide whether to upgrade, or to wait (perhaps for the x.1 version, which is typically a higher quality bugfixed delivery). Since kernel upgrades require rebooting (and again to downgrade after test), knowing whether to ignore a release based on its highlevel upgraded features itemization is a very effective announcement feature, which makes all of us using the releases more productive.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Er, that's why I was congratulating this featurelist. I'd like to see that kind of list in every release, and that link proves that it's possible. Great progress.
But a link in a Slashdot story to a KernelNewbies.org wiki page isn't the same as the actual kernel release announcement pointing to such a featurelist in the actual kernel package. Which would be the even better progress that I asked for. Which I think practically everyone would like to see happen.
Kernel debugger considered harmful by Linus (Score:5, Informative)
Reading on it, it seems that Linus never has been a great fan of kernel debuggers. From a famous post [lwn.net],
I happen to believe that not having a kernel debugger forces people to think about their problem on a different level than with a debugger. I think that without a debugger, you don't get into that mindset where you know how it behaves, and then you fix it from there. Without a debugger, you tend to think about problems another way. You want to understand things on a different _level_. [...]
I agree that stepping with a debugger instead of thinking real hard about the code (and using abundant log statements) is generally a waste of time, and that expecting to catch rare occurrences of weird race conditions with a debugger is not worth the effort. Sloppy programmers don't take the time to think, and rely too much on fixing what they could have not broken. Unit tests, although more expensive to code, can be reused many times - debugging sessions are one-shot.
On the other hand, even good programmers can get stuck and benefit from a debugger every once and then. I guess this argument finally won the day.
Re:Kernel debugger considered harmful by Linus (Score:5, Informative)
With high level code, a decent debugger is really really useful. With low level code, not so much.
(It's amazing though how many high level programmers don't understand the way debugging changes program behaviour (variable initialization etc - don't even mention heisenbugs)).
The best ever debugger is the "cardboard man". If you really get stuck you explain the code to anyone (including the cleaner). That way, (even though the cleaner doesn't understand anything) you exercise another part of your mind and *see* the problem (... well here we shift left (wtf? right?) oops).
Andy
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand, even good programmers can get stuck and benefit from a debugger every once and then. I guess this argument finally won the day.
Actually after programming in C the past five years I find a debugger completely worthless. Pretty much all problems boil down to:
1) memory / pointer errors
2) usage errors (bad casts, unset variables)
3) code too complicated to follow by reading
The first is covered by valgrind, or if your system doesn't have valgrind then first writing for x86 then porting. The second is covered well by gcc warnings. The third is covered better by logging than a debugger, or better yet just not writing complicated softwar
Re:Kernel debugger? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Kernel debugger? (Score:5, Funny)
Can someone whip out a cluebat please?
<WHACK />
There. Did that help?
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Re:Kernel debugger? (Score:4, Funny)
XML tags are lowercase.
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Re:Kernel debugger? (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. XML is case-sensitive, not lowercase. XHTML uses lowercase XML elements [w3.org], but in general XML elements are not lowercase only.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Kernel debugger? (Score:5, Interesting)
A kernel debugger is a program you can run from one computer, generally via a serial patch cable or some such, that lets you step through the kernel code running on another computer. It's like a normal debugger, but remote.
Linux has had kernel debuggers for years, but Linus never wanted it in mainline [linuxmafia.com], so it was always a patch, and sometimes didn't work on the latest kernel. Now, it's part of the kernel (I don't see any links to why Linus changed his mind, but you might be able to find something on LKML if you look).
Anyway, I think this is good news. I understand why Linus never wanted a debugger in the kernel, but I disagree with him on two points. First, even developers who have a good understanding of the code can get work done faster if they use a debugger. Using a debugger does not automatically relegate you to someone who doesn't have a good understanding of things, as Linus would have you believe (i.e. there's a difference between needing a debugger and being more productive with a debugger).
Second, there are a lot of people these days who just fix bugs, or just want to debug their own tiny kernel patch. I.e. people who don't have a full understanding of the system but who need to get something done. It's good that these people are now first-class citizens. They likely will never write a new kernel subsystem, but maybe they'll fix a few bugs and make life better for the rest of us.
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Re:init post (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:init post (Score:5, Informative)
Ugh, still no token ring support.
It had token ring support circa 2000 and you can probably resurrect the drivers if you need it.
OTOH if you're still using Token Ring you probably have Madge or Olicom cards whereas the best Linux support was for chipsets like the IBM Olympic.
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Re:Ah but does it run Linux?!? (Score:4, Funny)
Sure, just install Xen, and then you can indeed make it run Linux.
If you're feeling really masochistic, you could even create a beowulf cluster of Linux boxes, running Linux, with Linux running on them. /me watches his head explode.
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Re:Ah but does it run Linux?!? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Real writeable NTFS? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.ntfs-3g.org/
Not sure why it isn't in the kernel. But works great for me.
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Re:Real writeable NTFS? (Score:5, Informative)
Old NTFS stuff used to be really, really slow. Is ntfs-3g as fast as other filesystems on Linux, now?
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Re:Real writeable NTFS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not sure why it isn't in the kernel.
Because it doesn't need to be. Really, that's all there is to it. The old one took a long time to develop because kernel code is harder. The only real reason why you'd want an in-kernel driver is if you wanted to boot off of NTFS. The in-kernel driver is good enough to let you do that via a loopback file on the NTFS volume, so the rest can be in userspace.
Apple uses that, too, and I don't hear people complaining about Apple's support for NTFS. People who still complain about this are living in the past, or are hitting one of the few remaining strange corner cases that aren't yet supported (and I very much doubt you are).
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Re:Real writeable NTFS? (Score:5, Informative)
Here: http://www.ntfs-3g.org/ [ntfs-3g.org]
Why is it needed in the kernel?
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Also, blame Microsoft [microsoft.com] for not releasing the technical specs behind the FS. Reverse-engineering a filesystem (especially one that MS likes to change often) isn't exactly easy.
Finally, you can always reformat "larger USB drives" into a FS that's more efficient (ext3, reiserfs).
Re:Real writeable NTFS? (Score:4, Funny)
Careful, some of those other filesystems really kill performance.
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Re:Real writeable NTFS? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Real writeable NTFS? (Score:4, Funny)
We can give you closure, if you cut us a deal.
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Good point, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
...if your friend/colleague/whatever wants to use an NTFS-formatted drive on your computer, he might be a little unhappy if you reformat it.
I put NTFS support on my Linux computers and Ext2/Ext3 support [fs-driver.org] (and a proper formatting tool) on my Windows computers. It's called interoperability.
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Re:Good point, but... (Score:5, Funny)
...if your friend/colleague/whatever wants to use an NTFS-formatted drive on your computer, he might be a little unhappy if you reformat it.
I put NTFS support on my Linux computers and Ext2/Ext3 support [fs-driver.org] (and a proper formatting tool) on my Windows computers. It's called interoperability.
Nice one
Can't figure out if I should moderate as insightful, funny or +1 quality bitchsmack
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Re:Translation please? (Score:5, Informative)
Click the link in the story: http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_26 [kernelnewbies.org]
and it explains it all there
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Re:Is Linux kernel 2.6.26 == Linux 2.6.26 ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Is Linux kernel 2.6.26 == Linux 2.6.26 ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe your FreeBSD/NetBSD/etc are vaguely equivalent to Debian/Fedora/etc.
I'm not sure where exactly you're going with that
What he(?) means is that just as {Free,Net,Open}BSD are complete operating systems, so are Linux distros like Debian, Fedora, etc.
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Re:Is Linux kernel 2.6.26 == Linux 2.6.26 ? (Score:5, Informative)
Is Linux kernel 2.6.26 == Linux 2.6.26 ?
Yes. When people refer to entire distributions as "linux" they are being technically incorrect, as the GNU folks are kind to point out at the drop of a hat. The entire operating system is GNU/Linux - Linux is just the kernel.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The entire operating system is GNU/Linux - [...]
Because libc+shellutils+gcc is so much more relevant than X, KDE/e17/etc, the package manager, ...
Re:Is Linux kernel 2.6.26 == Linux 2.6.26 ? (Score:4, Insightful)
The entire operating system is GNU/Linux -
No, I think the entire operating system is GNU/Linux/X/Mozilla/QT/GTK/*insert favorite WM*/whatever else. If you refer to the entire OS as GNU/Linux, you are neglecting other key parts of the OS. If you call Windows NT, just NT there is no problems with it, the various divisions of MS don't call it Windows/DOS/NT do they? Linux is the name of the kernel, NT is the name of another kernel, yet I see both being referred to as Linux or NT, the difference is MS isn't always correcting you.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's part of the mac80211 layer, so it in theory supports any mac80211 driver, that is a 'soft MAC' WiFi chipset. There are minor driver changes required to support mesh (basically adding mesh beacons) and right now the zd1211rw and B43 drivers work. We have more details here:
http://o11s.org/trac [o11s.org]
B43 is your best bet at the moment, if you have a few of those, give the HOWTO on the o11s website a try and you can have your own mesh network.
Eventually other soft-MAC chipsets can work, such as Intel's iwlwifi,
Re:802.11s can run on generic WLAN hardware? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Did you file a bug report? Did they mark it fixed? If you answered no to either of these questions, you may be a whiner. You also may not know what you're talking about as you said "20+k interrupts" without actually specifying an amount of time or what type of interrupts they were, and you came and posted here rather than checking the change logs for things like, "dual core", "interrupt storm" or any other keywords.
Re:Ummm...Karma to Burn. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, you're going to get flamed, and for good reason. Just how easy do you think it is to support chipsets from manufacturers who supply no documentation, who load their firmware from their drivers, and who threaten to sue anyone who tries to do it on their own?
And so, yeah, maybe YOU should BECOME a developer.
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Re:Ummm...Karma to Burn. (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, let's try a more constructive approach.
``How about getting b,g,a working for standard (intel, broadcom, atheros) chipsets first.''
I'm sure it's being worked on. As for that happening _first_, I don't think that's a really good idea. To you, support for these chipsets may be very important, so important that it makes you feel bad if any features have been added, without adding supports for said chipsets, first. To others, these chipsets may not be so important. Those people would rather have other features added first. With the large number of people who are working on Linux, a lot of things can be worked on at the same time - but we can't hope to please everyone.
As for support for your chipsets - experience shows they will probably be supported someday, but it can take a long time. Exactly how long usually depends how cooperative the manufacturer of the chipset is, and how similar the chipset is to chipsets already supported. Both of these are under control of the manufacturer, so we are largely dependent on them.
``The same reason I get trolled and flamed, is the same reason that LINUX is never going to be more than a "hobby OS"''
I agree with you that flaming you isn't an appropriate response to your original post, which is clearly rooted in frustration. On the other hand, your attitude isn't exactly helpful, either. You complain about developers not supporting your favorite features - features that are probably hard for them to implement, because they are dependent on others who aren't cooperating - and tell them they should have supported your features instead of the many great features they did implement. Then you go on to claim - insultingly - that "LINUX is never going to be more than a \"hobby OS\"", which is clearly disingenious. Linux is being used professionally in many places. People are selling operating systems based on it, and devices with Linux on them. Clearly, it's already more than a hobby OS.
All in all, your complaint about lack of support for common network hardware is well-taken, and probably being worked on. It will take time, of course. Would you really have all other development on Linux halt while the drivers for your chipsets are developed? I don't think that would be wise. I understand (and share) your frustration, but I think the best course of action is:
1. Leave the developers to work on what they want to work on (possibly guided by suggestions from users)
2. For WLAN, choose chipsets that _are_ supported, and preferably with specifications available from the manufacturer. Support the manufacturers that support freedom of choice, not those that would lock you into proprietary software.
3. Express your frustration with the situation, but refrain from insulting people and using strong language. There's just no call for that.
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