Linux Kernel 2.6.24 Released 108
LinuxFan writes "Linus Torvalds has released the 2.6.24 Linux Kernel, noting that he and most of the other key Linux developers will be flying to a conference in Australia for the next week. As the whole team will be down under while the kernel is being tested by the masses, Linus added, "Let's hope it's a good one". What's new in the latest release includes an optimized CFQ scheduler, numerous new wireless drivers, tickless kernel support for the x86-64 and PPC architectures, and much more. Time to download and start compiling."
Wow. Lots of stuff. (Score:5, Interesting)
Merge Window? (Score:2, Interesting)
Now THERE's confidence for you. Great news.
Still no orinoco monitor mode (Score:2, Interesting)
Catching up to Windows on power (Score:3, Interesting)
But from a methodology viewpoint, does anyone understand the road Windows has trod, and how they have gotten to where they are? For instance, things like the tickless kernel are pretty fundamental. Is the Windows kernel tickless, or how do they get their power down if it isn't?
Re:I am really grateful for this release (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:tickless kernel support? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think CONFIG_HRTIMERS is already an option (may not default to on though). If it isn't, go find the RT_PREEMPT patchset. That includes (or if HRTIMERS is in the kernel, included) HRTIMERS, it's also where the NO_HZ option came from.
Re:Catching up to Windows on power (Score:5, Interesting)
It is sad reality the people keep mixing up technology and products.
Linux (as kernel and piece of technology) is far ahead of most OSs in power management and especially in power saving.
But. Take fresh Windows XP installation - it would give you decent up-time from single battery charge. Take Mac OS X - it would give you excellent up-time from single battery charge. Now take Linux's distro with X.Org/GNOME/KDE/etc - and it would eat any battery in under two hours.
It is possible to optimize Linux to be extremely power efficient, yet lion share of applications written for PCs simply fail on portables.
From recent example. I'm reading lots of PDF ebooks - under Mac OS. Trick is to scroll document to the end and then go back to place were you stopped: Mac OS would cache the file and hard drive will not wake up for the whole time you read thru the PDF. Linux? - Ubuntu/Kubuntu/SUSE/YellowDog were tried - hard drive is always spinning. Always. Non-stop. I stopped even trying to investigate what keeps it spinning - just went back to Mac OS. Because battery lasts under Linux for about 2 hours - while Mac OS on the aging iBook easily does 6 hours. But honestly, even if battery charge set aside, the noise produced by constantly spinning hard drive me slowly crazy.
Conclusion: excellent power management of kernel != end-user application are designed with power efficiency in mind.
P.S. Most common offenders are X.Org with its ~/.xsession-errors (as if end-users cared about all the cruft in there - developers simply do not look there at all) and syslogd which periodically (by default every 20 minutes) write marker into logs.
Re:I am really grateful for this release (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Catching up to Windows on power (Score:3, Interesting)