Linux 2.6.0 Kernel Released 837
thenextpresident writes "It's here! Just updated on kernel.org, the Linux 2.6.0 kernel has finally arrived! We've been waiting a long time for this, and it had been rumored it was going to be released tonight. Well, it's here indeed. Happy downloading." There's also a changelog online for this long-awaited update.
Yay (Score:2, Interesting)
Cool (Score:2, Interesting)
So what is new? (Score:2, Interesting)
Please save me! I'm lazy
How does this benefit me? (Score:5, Interesting)
I run linux as my desktop at home, and I also run it at work in a scientific computing cluster.
I'd like to know what benefits I could expect from the new kernel in each area in which I use linux.
Birthday Present! (Score:2, Interesting)
OK, slightly more on-topic I am already running test11 on a couple boxes with no overriding need to upgrade. However I am curious as to how 2.6 will be managed as opposed to 2.4. Since Linus has already handed off the kernel to Andrew Morton, are we going to see the 2.7 development branch open a whole lot faster than happened with 2.5???
Re:Yay (Score:3, Interesting)
hm (Score:1, Interesting)
Congrats to Linux from an OS X user (Score:5, Interesting)
-DA
NOT OT (Score:0, Interesting)
When longhorn comes out, 2.6 will be nearing its' EOL.
Re:SELinux (Score:5, Interesting)
My personal project is actually a big modification of the Domain & Type enforcement that is present in LSM now. but the code is nowhere near ready for inclusion just yet
Re:How does this benefit me? (Score:1, Interesting)
This is actually a problem with Linux? I mean, from what I'm reading here, this kernel release seems like an incremental upgrade... Like a Windows service pack, or Win98 -> Win98SE. I'm not trolling here...But can you imagine if MS released a service pack that would "wreck your system" if you weren't careful?
Interesting timing... (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, huzzah to the kernel team, I've enjoyed their work for enough years. Not much champagne available here, but a heartfelt and lukewarm Milwaukee piss (offered).
I've been using 2.5.x and -test kernels off and on here, and its definitely a step in the right direction even for my humble desktop, IMHO. If I was to be bold I'd even say that 2.6 is a positive change (for users) in the same way that 2.0 was. Just based on the scheduling and device support, SMP (I use it), bigmem, etc.
And no, I'm not really worried about the SCO/IBM thing - the outcome won't change my opinions or Linux usage patterns an iota.
Re:prepare for the... (Score:5, Interesting)
Excuse my ignorance (I'm not familar with the new 2.6 build system) but I really *did* like the make menuconfig approach. It's been that way since way-back-when so I could probably do it blindfolded. In addition, make menuconfig is great for building a new kernel over a slow (e.g. dial-up) ssh session. I actually rebuilt the kernel on my PC in Virginia from a cyber-cafe in Paris once.
Caps off a stellar open source year (Score:5, Interesting)
Its great to see this go out in 2003, capping off a stellar year for open source. Mozilla 1.4/5, Gnome 2.4, KDE 3.2 (almost), Apache 2.x...and countless other pieces of the puzzle coming together in an awesome ecosystem.
Corporations haven't just 'taken notice', they are actively pushing this stuff. They are amping up great services behind the new commodity - software.
RedHat and IBM and Novell are leading the charge from the .com side while a huge developer community has taken root in the volunteer ranks.
2.6 was the icing on the cake - the version that really challenges the most established kernels across the entire spectrum. BRAVO!!
Re:How does this benefit me? (Score:1, Interesting)
For end users (Score:5, Interesting)
Steps Back (Score:5, Interesting)
http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5127627.html?tag=
All these quotes apparently came from Mr. Morton himself.
"...the part of 2.6 that communicates with memory is less efficient, imposing a practical limit of 24GB of memory to the 32GB that 2.4 could handle. However, he believes that programmers will address the problem."
Is this reduced limit useful? Why should it be up to programmers to code around? Did I miss something?
"The new kernel also monitors for new events more frequently--1,000 times per second instead of 100--a fact that slows down the system about 1 percent..."
I assume it's to try and respond to events faster but increasing it tenfold, isn't that overkill? I mean, it slows the system down by 1% which isn't horrible and if a real-time app has a problem with it, you can always modify the kernel yourself but couldn't they have upped the polling to 250 which is a decent increase but not a 10x one.
"In addition, 2.6 requires somewhat more memory to run and shows worse performance when it has to use hard drives as extra memory under heavy loads... "
That seems reasonable that it needs a bit more memory but why should it see adverse effects under heavy loads as compared to the 2.4 kernel? Shouldn't they degrade at around the same level or are there some new file system issues that cause this?
Enlighten me.
Re:How does this benefit me? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've heard so much about this, but having used the 2.6 tests for the last two months (2.6 supports my card reader, 2.4 doesn't, so I don't have a choice) I've noticed absolutely no difference in performance. That said, 2.6 is extremely stable (probably more so than 2.4 IME) and there's no reason why not to use it either. But performance as far as the end user is concerned is not significantly different as far as I can see.
Stallman trivia (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How does this benefit me? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So what is new? (Score:3, Interesting)
+5, Sad but true... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm still praying that people will learn from experience. Don't seem they'll learn much any other way at least...
Kjella
Re:How does this benefit me? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:ide-scsi (Score:5, Interesting)
In early November, Bill Davidsen
responded to a post on the LKML about a problem someone was having with burning a CD. Davidsen said:
There is a problem with ide-scsi in 2.6, and rather than fix it someone came up with a patch to cdrecord to allow that application to work properly, and perhaps "better" in some way. Since the problem with ide-scsi seems to still exist for other applications, you will probably find you have to work around the problem, by using the -pad option of cdrecord (thought that was standard now for TAO at least) or reading using the ide-cd driver.
Torvalds responded to Davidsen's post by writing:
On 6 Nov 2003, bill davidsen wrote:
>
> There is a problem with ide-scsi in 2.6, and rather than fix it someone
> came up with a patch to cdrecord to allow that application to work
> properly, and perhaps "better" in some way.
Wrong.
The "somebody" strongly felt that ide-scsi was not just ugly but _evil_, and that the syntax and usage of "cdrecord" was absolutely stupid.
That somebody was me.
ide-scsi has always been broken. You should not use it, and indeed there was never any good reason for it existing AT ALL. But because of a broken interface to cdrecord, cdrecord historically only wanted to touch SCSI devices. Ergo, a silly emulation layer that wasn't really worth it.
The fact that nobody has bothered to fix ide-scsi seems to be a result of nobody _wanting_ to really fix it.
So don't use it. Or if you do use it, send the fixes over.
Linus
The back-and-forth between Davidsen and Torvalds has continued, and as a result more and more of Torvalds disdain for the ide-scsi and cdrecord interface has bubbled to the surface. Torvalds has said, among other things, that:
* "anybody who uses cdrecord has either been confused by the silly SCSI numbering"
* "Some people ended up having to boot with ide-scsi enabled to burn CD's, but then if they wanted to watch DVD's (on the same drive), they needed to boot without it."
* "the old cdrecord interfaces are an UNBELIEVABLE PILE OF CRAP!"
* "It's an interface that is based on some random hardware layout mechanism that isn't even TRUE any more, and hasn't been true for a long time."
* "It's bad from a technical standpoint (anybody who names a generic device with a flat namespace is just basically clueless), and it's bad from a usability standpoint. It has _zero_ redeeming qualities."
There's more, but that's enough to give you a sense of Torvalds' unhappiness with the whole approach of both one particular (though very popular) app and the ide-sci module itself.
http://programming.linux.com/article.pl?sid=03/
smbfs differences between 2.4 and 2.6 ? (Score:2, Interesting)
--
sorry to bother you this late in the 2.6 test series, but i wondered whether this change in smbfs behaviour was intended (or how it could be affected by mount options, etc):
during my using the 2.4.x kernels, i mainly used smbfs as a convenient way to access various data which was not located in subdirectories of the mount source, but symlinked from other server directories. i think this is also the behaviour the user experiences when mounting from other operating systems.
with 2.6.x (can't remember 2.5.x...) clients i have been unable to mount the same sources in a similar way, symlinks would still appear as symlinks, making the linked data much more difficult to access.
could you tell me whether i missed a mount option or this diverging behaviour is intentional?
Re:what distro is best for trying this out? (Score:3, Interesting)
Short answer, just do it.
Shorter answer: Yes
Wow...no sDOS (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Newbie question & answer (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Knoppix? Any CD bootable Linux 2.6 version? (Score:3, Interesting)
Laptop power management? (Score:2, Interesting)
Happy downloading. (Score:4, Interesting)
Existing LVM and 2.6.0 ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yay (Score:1, Interesting)
AGP subsystem? (Score:3, Interesting)
Has anyone had similar experiences with the new kernel? I'd like to see if it's just my configuration, my video drivers (though the ATI drivers had no AGP problems and were rock solid under 2.4, and claim to support 2.6, you never know...), or something else. I know that the AGP subsystem has had a major overhaul in 2.6 and the bugs are still being ironed out, but it'd be nice to know what to blame.
And if something in my post doesn't make sense, it's 1:45 AM over here (GMT -08:00), so I have an excuse
Re:LotR:RotK + Kernel = Early Christmas (Score:2, Interesting)
Damnit, now I'm duplicating articles on /.
ATAPI finally working with DMA (Score:5, Interesting)
With 2.6, DMA works properly with ATAPI commands, at least when using the new ATAPI virtual SCSI bus (NOT the ide-scsi module!). To use the new virtual bus, use 'dev=ATAPI:0,0,0' in a cdrecord command. You may also need to use the latest alpha of cdrecord.
I can now burn 2 CDs at once (multiple burners), at 52x without my CPU load going over 0.2!
Of course, if you had the luxury of using REAL SCSI CD burners before, this won't make a lick of difference to you.
ACPI support... (Score:3, Interesting)
APM support has gotten me so far, but some things on this laptop would be more doable if I had acpi support, and I have another laptop which doesn't support apm at all.
Direct booting from floppy is no longer supported. (Score:4, Interesting)
Direct booting from floppy is no longer supported.
You should now use a boot loader program such as syslinux instead.
"make bzdisk" continues to work (now using syslinux).
Does this mean what I think it does? No more floppy boot disks? Or am I misreading?
Re:Pull yourself together man (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Direct booting from floppy is no longer support (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:NOT OT (Score:3, Interesting)