Linux 2.6.34 Released 268
diegocg writes "Linux 2.6.34 has been released. This version adds two new filesystem, the distributed filesystem Ceph and LogFS, a filesystem for flash devices. Other features are a driver for almost-native KVM network performance, the VMware balloon driver, the 'kprobes jump' optimization for dynamic probes, new perf features (the 'perf lock' tool, cross-platform analysis support), several Btrfs improvements, RCU lockdep, Generalized TTL Security Mechanism (RFC 5082) and private VLAN proxy arp (RFC 3069) support, asynchronous suspend/resume, several new drivers and many other small improvements. See the full changelog here."
All Very Nice But... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the RT2500-based chipset working reliably now?
The developers switched to a new driver model because it's "better".
If "better" means once-working wifi chipset becomes grossly unstable, previous drivers are considered "legacy" hence will not compile on kernels later that 2.6.29 and current drivers are as stable as a "one-legged man playing football".
A few years later and 2.6.34 is released - is it working yet?
Considering the RT2500 chipset is present many wifi products the current state of "stability" is woefully inadequate.
(and don't get me started on f***ed up i845 drivers for xorg! - worked fine under previous kernels & xorg an update later by both - graphics performance royally screwed and many crashes)
Apart from that - happy Linux user for over 10 years!
Re:Excellent (Score:1, Insightful)
Hmmm...sounds like your company would be better off hiring a new systems administrator than going with Windows. Good thing you're posting as AC!
GPU switching (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you restart X without affecting all your GUI apps? If you can't restart X without bringing down your GUI apps, I don't see the point for the target audience.
For some people, "only having to restart X" will only save a bit of time over rebooting the whole laptop, reconfiguring bios etc.
Re:All Very Nice But... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's how the dismal state of support for that chipset was explained to me.
The answer is probably that mine has worked for years and yours hasn't. The really annoying thing is a lot of slightly different things have come out under that name and even under MS Windows if you don't use the driver that came with it you are stuffed - a driver for another undocumented variant won't help.
Re:Excellent (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a bug, not a feature.
"Maximum performance"? If it's storing customer data, I want a kernel that's had heavy automated testing, a full round of manual QA, and validation by my hardware vendor, thank you very much.
Re:Excellent (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't put bleeding edge or custom kernels on production servers without seriously heavy testing. You would not run production stuff on a windows beta release would you? It's the same thing.
Stick to proper releases of good distributions and customize as little as possible. You will get a system many times more stable than anything MS has ever come up with.
Re:GPU switching (Score:4, Insightful)
Good question, but wrong project. The kernel is only responsible for initializing, suspending, resuming and lately modesetting of the hardware and it seems that is possible now. There probably needs to be some userspace code to pull information from one GPU and load it into the other but that's for the xorg server to do. They're probably working on it but it won't be in a Linux (the kernel) release announcement.
Re:All Very Nice But... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem for me is that the "legacy" drivers were rock solid and I never thought about it until kernel 2.6.30 & greater were released.
My wifi was ultra-reliable under the "legacy" drivers.
Since the newer drivers were released I have had nothing but problems.
What changed between old and new drivers?
Re:a filesystem for flash devices (Score:1, Insightful)
If Linux isn't for nerds then who is it for? House fraus whose TV's are on the blink? Unrelenting overlords of evil corporate empires? Has-been movie starts and their hippie dippie 60 something rockstar friends? Well, maybe all of them, but especially nerds.
Woooosh
(that was the sound of the joke flying over your head)
Re:Excellent (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Excellent (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah... that's not going to happen. Not only am I good at what I do (seriously, how many system administrators even take their time to compile custom kernels nowadays for maximum performance?), but a very close relative is also the CEO. I bet people here even use us for their hosting :)
There is a massive amount of difference between being able to compile a custom kernel and being in the kind of situation where it's the right thing to do. 'Good at what you do' doesn't mean technically brilliant, it means doing the right thing at the right time.
Keeping your job because you are related to the CEO is the kind of nepotism that kills otherwise good companies.
Re:Excellent (Score:3, Insightful)
Because I've heard the exact same thing from people who actually believe it and have done it at their job. It is a comment made by a young, inexperienced person (I can't call them an administrator) who doesn't have the experience to understand the problems with doing this.
What, can't be. According to slashdot all Linux administrators are born as black belt Linux experts and Windows administrators are all people that got lucky bumbling through their MSCE exam. Usually in comparison where five incompetent Windows administrators could be replaced with one competent Linux administrator, even though you could probably replace five incompetents with one competent one in general.
Re:Excellent (Score:4, Insightful)
What, can't be. According to slashdot all Linux administrators are born as black belt Linux experts and Windows administrators are all people that got lucky bumbling through their MSCE exam.
Noone is born a black belt at anything. You have to work at it. There are inexperienced Linux admins just like there are inexperienced windows admins. The ones who can't or don't want to learn end up on windows eventually.
Re:All Very Nice But... (Score:2, Insightful)
Let me clear it up for you. "Open source" means "If you come bitching and moaning to me that I haven't freely given you enough of my time already, while being too Goddamn lazy to make any contributions of your own, then I will mock you back into the Stone Age."
So the original post was someone whining to you personally about linux drivers? The guy asked a general question about a driver with some odd history. Either respond like a normal human being or shut the hell up.
Re:KVM (Score:3, Insightful)
You put your virtualization on the new machines not on the hand-me-down stuff, silly. Your old machines weren't speced for them. You need to run the thing on a box that can take a crap-ton of RAM, has really fast I/O, and depending on the load, has the ability to take a NIC per VM.
"Virtualization is supposed to CUT costs, not incur new hardware costs"
It does cut costs... it cuts hardware costs by allowing you to buy fewer servers. Instead of buying new servers for DNS, LDAP, Web, and Email, you can buy one server, one license for the virtualization software, and consolidate the whole mess.
Cutting costs doesn't always imply using hand-me-down hardware. If the CPU doesn't have hardware VM built on it, it isn't an ideal candidate for serving virtual machines period. Those old servers might just have to sold on craigslist to some web-shop looking for extra web servers to shove behind their load balancer.
PS: This is one reason businesses lease servers instead of buy them. It makes it easy to cycle out the old junk every few years.
Re:All Very Nice But... (Score:3, Insightful)
Applying that argument to Linux is retarded.
Uhh... why?
What, you think the driver model, network stack, etc, in Linux is 100% static and will never, ever change?
The only reason you think it's "retarded" is because Microsoft likes these big splash releases every five years, while Linux is constantly evolving, and that means if the driver model changes, it could very well be between minor revision numbers (which aren't actually minor).
Re:a filesystem for flash devices (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Excellent (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this a new "Humorless Monday" holiday I haven't yet heard about? Or do kernel people really take themselves this seriously?
Christ. You're like the fifth reply who didn't get that the parent was an EXTREMELY OBVIOUS JOKE. Laugh, stupid.
Re:Excellent (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, two wooshes in one thread.
Also:
The ones who can't or don't want to learn end up on windows eventually.
That's the dumbest fucking thing I have ever read in my life.
You're seriously delusional if you think that Windows servers are inferior to Linux servers in any way. (Well, "any" way is an overstatement, but any practical way.) If you're doing communication, Exchange is great. If you're doing filesharing/single sign-on, Active Directory is also great. IIS is as good, or better, than Apache at all benchmarks, and has more features. Decent support for technologies like OLAP pretty much only exist on Windows at the moment.
Nobody's going to argue that Windows is cheaper than Linux. But arguing that it's worse, that's harder to make-- unless of course you know fuck-all about Windows and just repeat FUD on Slashdot all day.
Re:KVM (Score:3, Insightful)
Virtualization is supposed to CUT costs, not incur new hardware costs.
It's not even remotely uncommon for overall cost-cutting to require additional up front expenses.