Talk to the IBM Linux Hackers 245
We've all heard plenty about IBM's investment in Linux, but we don't hear much from -- or about -- the actual Linux developers at IBM. This interview is not with one person, but with a number of IBM Linux people spearheaded by Dave Hansen, who volunteered to help us with this interview. Of the group responding to your questions, Dave says, "There are more people, but the majority of the group's skills are represented. No surprise that we'll have our responses reviewed before we send them back to you, but we'll try to expedite that.
"A little background:
The group's experience is pretty broad. Most members were Sequent employees who worked on Dynix/PTX before IBM acquired Sequent (we are still mostly based in Beaverton, OR). Not everyone was with Sequent; Matt Dobson and Dave Hansen came into the group last summer, right out of college. A few of our Austin colleagues are long time IBM employees who worked on the AIX kernel before moving to Linux. Ask about anything from the rmap VM, to PTX's crashdump facilities, to life in Portland :)
- Martin Bligh - Large IA32 system VM scalability, Specweb, NUMA
- Dave Hansen - Big Kernel Lock, SMP locking, Specweb99
- Matt Dobson - NUMA API/ Documentation
- Rick Lindsley - SMP/NUMA Locking, Performance Tuning
- Patricia Gaughen - Discontiguous Memory for NUMA
- Bill Irwin - VM/rmap hacker
- Hanna Linder - dcache_lock scalability
- Janet Morgan - I/O Scalability
- Ruth Forrester - database/performance/scalability"
Re:Multi-CPU Scalability (Score:1, Informative)
That says nothing about the main point of the question of 64-128 processor multi-processors.
Re:OS Blending (Score:3, Informative)
There's a pretty large (virtual) fence between the AIX and Linux hackers. That doesn't stop IBM from trying to get AIXisms into Linux (read JFS and powerpc optimizations).
If the economy wasn't so damn bad I'd have transferred over to the LTC long ago...
(posting anonymously to keep my job...)
Re:linux on thinkpads (Score:2, Informative)
This new a31p has a built in wireless card, that was the only thing that needed work, and once I put 2.5.13 on it, even that card worked fine. I used the stock redhat 7.3 CD to install everything. Even X.
The video card on this laptop is an ATI Mobility Fire GL 7800 (64MB video card), it's supposed to be bad-ass, only Dell ships with a 64MB nvidia to compete with this a31 model btw.
Apart from the modem, I think IBM's laptops are the greatest mobile machines to install Linux on.
But aside from that, I agree with the final question. About this time last year, you could find Linux pre-installed on the ibm.com website, hell it was even advertised
Re:linux on thinkpads (Score:2, Informative)
Oh, sound was an issue, but IBM's website tells you how to make it work. It uses the cs4232 driver. The device does not init correctly on boot for some reason, so if you remove then remodprobe the module it works fine.
I'm unable to suspend to disk, but I didn't set up a partition for that. Haven't seen if Windows will still do it after I repartitioned.
I'm looking forward to the suspend to RAM functionality of the 2.5 kernel.
I've been trying to get the serial port to work today without much success. I believe I have the tools required.
The MWave soft modem driver was released just a bit ago (source and all I believe), I have downloaded the driver, but haven't tried it yet.
I've gotten DVD working great with mplayer (be sure to use the FFmpeg library). On a P2-400MHz!
All in all I'm very pleased! I got mine for a song on Ebay.
Re:linux on thinkpads (Score:1, Informative)
1) The "Thinkpad" button for example.
2) The notorious inability to have simultaneous CRT+LCD display on the T2x machines (with Savage chipsets)
3) No 3D graphics support for the T2x based machines.
Re:linux on thinkpads (Score:1, Informative)
daemon does its hardware probing. (The Linux cs4232
module doesn't grab all of the ports that the sound
system actually uses.) Check the resources used by
the sound chip under Windows and exclude them in the
PCMCIA configuration file.
Re:distros? (Score:2, Informative)
I personally use SuSE 8.0 Professional on my workstation (I'm typing on it right now, in fact). We have our own internal mirrors that have the latest Linux distributions on them - that's where I got my copy from.
Most people use the Client for eBusiness, but I'm more comfortable with SuSE.
Re:not laid off? (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, the layoffs did not completely miss the Linux folks in Beaverton (or elsewhere) but I think IBM's commitment to Linux is underscored by how it was minimized.
Re:linux on thinkpads (Score:1, Informative)