Linux Kernel v2.6.23 Released 346
diegocgteleline.es writes "After 3 months, Linus has released Linux 2.6.23. This version includes the new and shiny CFS process scheduler, a simpler read-ahead mechanism, the lguest 'Linux-on-Linux' paravirtualization hypervisor, XEN guest support, KVM smp guest support, and variable process argument length. SLUB is now the default slab allocator, there's SELinux protection for exploiting null dereferences using mmap, XFS and ext4 improvements, PPP over L2TP support. Also the 'lumpy' reclaim algorithm, a userspace driver framework, the O_CLOEXEC file descriptor flag, splice improvements, a new fallocate() syscall, lock statistics, support for multiqueue network devices, various new drivers, and many other minor features and fixes. See the changelog for details."
Cue CFS/SD Benchmarks (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ummm. Neat. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll bite.
Your point that usability is important is true. However, your implication that progress in the kernel prevents progress elsewhere is questionable. There are plenty of people working on usability and creating new desktop interfaces. I'd argue that a current installation of Ubuntu, installed on cooperative hardware, is quite easy to use. But there's no need to sacrifice the underlying elegance or power of Linux to get there -- the shell shouldn't be "hard to find", just unnecessary for most people.
To drag out some car analogies: 1. There's no reason the engineers can't still work on the engine while the designers are still working on making the "driver experience" simpler and more comfortable. 2. It's a good idea to reduce the regular maintenance that a driver needs to perform, but there's no need to weld the hood shut or lock it just to prove to yourself that they don't need to fiddle with it.
Re:What about the license? (Score:5, Insightful)
For the foreseeable future, Linux will be under the GPLv2 license. A lot of Linux code is only available under that license, and isn't forward compatible without developer permission. Given that many Linux devs either won't give permission or can't be located (died, stopped contributing, whatever), relicensing will be a major effort, even if leaders were so inclined. Basically, if Linux goes GPLv3, you'll hear about it at least 6 months in advance, and probably weekly during those 6 months if you read Slashdot.
Re:What about O_CLOEXEC for sockets? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ummm. Neat. (Score:5, Insightful)
computing was supposed to automate. supposed to make everyones lives easier by helping the person. now look at it. walk into any corporate office and you'll see countless people (myself included) clicking on this and that to satisfy what the computer wants out of you. it feels like you are there to help the computer achieve uptimes, or defragged disks, getting rid of viruses, blocking ports, unblocking ports...
am i there to help the computer do it's job? or is the computer there to help me do mine?
why does the computer occupy the center of my desk? why isn't it tucked away in the utility closet?
but that's a more philosophical discussion to be had - under the influence
Re:Ummm. Neat. (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot is a technical community so my comment may not be well received.
No, your comment won't be well received because it has nothing at all to do with the article or the Linux kernel.
Re:Ummm. Neat. (Score:2, Insightful)
Most people use the shell because it is fast and easy. It is as if they finally get it. Those that don't want to use the shell, don't have to. They just won't be able to do everything as easily. But as for being a user, it is quite simple to configure everything from the desktop, do your work from the desktop, and not even see a shell. Mandrake (mandriva) has had this ability for several years now. Ubuntu seems to be on the same track.
I'm guessing that your experience is a little dated or you were attempting to do stuff that normal users wouldn't need to do. Most package managers like those in mandriva or ubuntu will install everything your need from a GUI. The software repositories offer a little more if you hit a shell usually, but you shouldn't need to in order to do most things. And the newer versions of webmin could pretty much replace most of everything you would think you need a shell for. I recently used webmin to partition, format and mount a drive 15 miles away and I pointed and clicked everything but my login and password.
I think what you asked for has already been accomplished at least to a reasonable degree. Try out the new mandriva release and make sure webmin is installed. Outside of it _not_being_windows, it should quite capable. And I underscored not being windows because linux will never be windows. The sooner people realize that, the less disappointed they become.
Re:Ummm. Neat. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ummm. Neat. (Score:5, Insightful)
I just think in order to get Linux adopted by the populous, it's going to take more than kernel enhancements to see that through.
But see, the problem is that nobody's arguing that kernel enhancements alone *are* going to result in the rise of desktop-Linux-for-the-masses. What you're doing is akin to walking into a university campus that's just expanded a bit and proclaiming how they're not doing enough to save the baby whales. Yes, some of the facilities and information dispersed therein may be getting used by people looking to save the baby whales, and some of the staff may even be interested in saving the baby whales themselves, but the university is not in fact there to save the baby whales, but instead serve as general resource that can be utilized in a number of different and often drastically divergent ways.
Re:Ummm. Neat. (Score:4, Insightful)
"But graphic UI's are the future of computing and I think it's high time for a distribution to make it HARD to find the shell in an OS."
You can have my shell when you pry it from my cold dead hands - same as my keyboard!
Most distros come with multiple GUIs, and those GUIs are superior to anything Redmond can put out. Add that to the ability to run Windows in a window (where it belongs, if it belongs at all on your box), and mp3 and dvd installers a click away in the newest distros, 21 gigs of software free for the downloading, faster release/bugfix/update cycles ... if you want a GUI, you can have your pick.
But do NOT take away my terminals. There are a lot of things that are quicker to do in a term than with a clicky interface. Have you not heard of "the right tool for the job"?
Re:Ummm. Neat. (Score:4, Insightful)
Usability is a problem for the desktop maintainers ( the KDE or GNOME guys ), not the kernel hackers.
Added bonus, the desktop maintainers can be OS agnostic if they like, so the usability gains that linux sees can easily transfer to BSD or OpenSolaris, should they turn out to be better kernels overall
Re:Answer: Linux will never be GPL3. (Score:3, Insightful)
are you implying there is something wrong with re-evaluating circumstances and utilizing other OSS?
The biggest mistake one can ever make is attempting to make simple statements permanent regardless of how the environment around it changes.
Re:Answer: Linux will never be GPL3. (Score:3, Insightful)
There have been large projects such as Samba and Asterisk that have had the economic incentive to go through the hassle of changing licenses to something more favorable to their intentions, but for the kernel the hassle is going to be so much greater that the incentive will have to be very high. Something like a court (very unlikely) declaring GPLv2 to be unenforceable, for instance, would be the kind of incentive needed to push this change through the kernel.
Using the syscall license thing as an analogy for a GPXv2 to GPLv3 transition is not really fair as the scope of the latter is so much greater. The syscall changes were an attempt to clarify and explicitly restate an interpretation of the existing license, not to change it.
Re:You know the drill... (Score:3, Insightful)
Massive speed of kernel evolution (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think it can be entirely attributed to the linux kernel merely catching-up with other operating systems.
Re:Ummm. Neat. (Score:4, Insightful)
As with any other tool this means that it has to be somewhere you can get at it(on your desk) and that you need to know how to use it(ask anyone who has never used a hammer before to pound in a nail and see how many times they stuff it up).
Now you might argue that a computer is a lot harder to use than a hammer, but that's mostly because it's metaphorically a bit more like a toolbox. It has tools within it to perform specific tasks as opposed to doing only one task(historically this has had to do with cost, but as we see comodotized hardware prices this may change). When you have a toolbox full of tools, you not only need to know how to use the individual tools, you also need to know how to find them in the toolbox, how to properly and safely remove them from and return them to the toolbox, as well as how to perform any required maintainence to your toolbox.
In the same way in order to use your finance application(the tool), you need to know how to find it and run it as well as how to actually use it. Someone(not necessarily you) also needs to know how to put the tool where you can get it in the first place(install the software), clean the gunk out of the toolbox(maintain the PC) and to transfer all your tools from an old toolbox to a new toolbox when your old one falls apart, or you need one which can hold more tools.
Re:Ummm. Neat. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. You service the computer, so that the computer can service the rest of us. Until such time as a computer is created that requires no maintenance at all, such will be the way of things. Thank you by the way - my job would be harder without people like you doing yours.
Even adding machines needed oiling and parts replacing sometimes.
why does the computer occupy the center of my desk? why isn't it tucked away in the utility closet?
Well I can't speak for you, but personally I'm a programmer. A large part of my job requires me to be sat at a keyboard, writing and modifying code. I guess it doesn't really matter where the PC itself is, as long as I have monitor, keyboard and mouse on my desk; I hardly ever use the CD drive. But I know that wasn't quite what you meant...
Re:Ummm. Neat. (Score:5, Insightful)
Would it surprise you to find out that most of the community agrees with that statement? .. With one caveat, however: You're confusing Linux, the opreating system kernel, with the rest of a complete system. If we were discussing one of the *BSDs, I'd not balk, but there is a huge difference between Linux and what you're talking about. Linux runs behind the scenes and has nothing whatsoever to do with usability or even UIs.
The last thing you want to do is hide functionality - especially necessary functionality - from users. All Apple did was wrap a Mach kernel under a NeXT-ish facade and hide the majority of the more "advanced" features. IMO, there's no reason to make the shell go away, but rather to set it aside in a non-intrusive and logical place - exactly how most current distributions set it up. You can still get to a terminal emulator in OS X - it's harder, sure, but it's still trivial to make it readily accessible - and it uses BASH, a powerful and quite useful shell. By contrast, on Windows, it's not obvious where the shell is right away, and once you know where it is, you quickly find it's limiting and hard to use - if you're an advanced user, it's useless.
It's quite unified. There's surprisingly little fragmentation in the community (save for Vim/Emacs and KDE/Gnome zealots), and a lot is accomplished daily. We have, right now, not one but ten (more?) advanced, powerful, and very usable desktop environments (including Gnome and KDE); a constantly improving graphical server that now supports advanced 3D effects, render acceleration, compositing, and multiple pointers (new! for multi-touch displays and the like a la iPhone); powerful multimedia features that audiophiles and videophiles are turning to in droves; multiple complete suites of office-targetted applications (KOffice, AbiWord, OpenOffice.org, and others); and many, many other programs that most users will always find that meet their immediate needs. And that's just in the stable repositories.
My question for you is this: What do you think is missing? We'll get somebody on it.
Re:Ummm. Neat. (Score:3, Insightful)
That of course doesn't mean the poster you were responding to was right himself, he wasn't, but then neither is the picture of a linux install always being about as hard as putting in a disk and letting it run.
You've cited the wrong problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
Keeping it running gets interesting.
I am not a Linux guru, but I've been writing how-to articles on Linux for the last 3 years.
I have a fairly standard sort of setup, a Biostar GeForce 6100 AM2 integrated motherboard with Nvidia chipset and Athlon 64x2/4200 and 2G DDR2.
The normal procedure for installing a new nvidia video driver is:
# aptitude remove nvidia
# aptitude install nvidia[version compatible with kernel version]
Easy enough.
I had to do extensive research to find workarounds that would permit me to install the nvidia driver on the last three kernel upgrades
Last time around, I found out that the new kernel upgrade was compiled on a different gcc version than the version of gcc which had been pushed out via automatic update about a month before.
Before that, I found out based on a web search on the error message that the kernel developers decided to make a kernel call relating to paravirtualization unavailable to non-GPL proprietary drivers, some digging found me a patched kernel with the fix.
Would you like to talk a MCSE or your grandmother through what I just described?
I don't take the assertion that "Linux is ready for the masses" seriously yet and neither should anyone else. This delusion is bad for the Linux community as a whole, as it reduces the pressure on developers to fix the remaining problems.
Getting there? Certainly. I'd be far more surprised than not if Linux is to the point where a member of the general public can use it without having a Linux guru available to provide hands-on help by this time next year. But that time is not now. Do you want 20 or 30 million people running into trouble they can't handle, reformatting their boxes for XP, and telling their friends that Linux is shit? I certainly don't.
Re:What about the license? (Score:3, Insightful)
BSD license does not allow you to relicense the code. On the contrary, it states that the terms and conditions and legal notices must be retained in full. Under copyright law, any right not explicitly granted is reserved.
Re:A pre-packaged ISO, please... (Score:2, Insightful)
As a non-drinker, that sounds great to me.
You can compile your kernel from source in almost any distro.
TWW
Re:Answer: Linux will never be GPL3. (Score:1, Insightful)
So in other words, he can write a new GPL-3 kernel and call it "Linux", since he's in charge of the name (maybe reusing some code from the current Linux if he can get it appropriately licenced). The extent to which it resembles what's currently known as Linux could be anything.
Re:bloat (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:bloat (Score:3, Insightful)
Try that with windows or OSX. It cant be called bloat until they force it on you.
Re:Ummm. Neat. (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny, the same is true of Vista.
Maybe you should be laying blame where it's due: the hardware manufacturers.
Re:it's nvidia's fault that (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no reason you can't have 2 or more compilers on the same machine. I used to have both 2.95 and 3.something_or_other, no problems (I kept 2.95 around for a while because of the bugs in 2.96)