Linux 2.6.36 Released 238
diegocg writes "Version 2.6.36 of the Linux kernel has been released. This version includes support for the Tilera architecture, a new filesystem notification interface called fanotify, CIFS local caching, support for Intel Intelligent Power Sharing in i3/5 systems, integration of the kernel debugger and KMS, inclusion of the AppArmor security system, a redesign of workqueues optimized for concurrency, and several new drivers and small improvements. See the full changelog here for more details."
TFA (Score:5, Funny)
The one post where 90% of /. users will actually read TFA
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what i like about kernel releases... (Score:4, Funny)
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Well it would be easier to agree with him had Linus actually trolled about anything in the release announcement.
The only thing that comes close to trolling was his mater-of-fact accounting of the status of fanotify. It's not much of a troll considering that fanotify was set to be a one of the bigger bullet points of the release and got yanked at the last moment. It was worth mentioning. Also considering that it was yanked because of an oh shit [lkml.org] late in the cycle he certainly could have been more pointed i
Fanotify disabled in this version (Score:4, Informative)
Because of desagreement in the ABI the fanotify is disabled in this kernel.
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Whoa. Not enough caffeine yet.... momentarily misread that as "Fanboynotify is disabled in this version." Which then had me wondering why it was posted here... O_o
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That would be enabled by default in Mach. /me ducks
news for gnurds? (Score:5, Funny)
This is why I come here.
Actually, I'll come back in 4 hours and read the top comments not modded funny. That's why I come here.
They should make a slashdot that's just about linux projects, nasa/physics stuff, and DIY routers. Like slashdot vintage. It'd be classy. Elastic band jeans and plaid tie dress code. God I miss the good old days. *pours mad dog 20/20 on anti-static carpeting*
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Sounds like you just need to set up a view to filter the articles you see.
Except the DIY routers, we're all the way up to DIY Internet.
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I miss not having to post replies to threads in this tiny, postage-stamp form field. "Quote Parent" is just not enough feature benefit to justify how ugly and unusable this has become!
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Click the prefs button on the bottom left of the comments page. Unclick the 'Dynamic Discussions' and then click save.
That seems to be the only way to access that pref, and it is sort of fun that they went ahead and created a new pref, rather than continuing to respect the 'Enable classic comments' pref.
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/. is rejecting my Pref settings.
Probably something to do with AdBlock+, BetterPrivacy and Ghostery. :-)
I am not giving that up...
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I don't know which browser you use but with Safari I get a textarea roughly 855x260 pixels.
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Or just go back to the 1990s and use AWeb. All textareas had a wonderful little widget that you're just click and then you would be editing your text with $EDITOR.
I wonder why this rather obvious feature never really caught on. It's pretty silly to think that any web browser can possibly ever come up with The One Right way to edit text, considering the vim-vs-emacs war still isn't over. The best answer to the question is to un-ask the question. The user has already installed their favorite editor and to
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Why don't slashdot got vi bindings? Now you HAVE got me wishing!
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It's all Text! [mozilla.org]
Edit textareas using an external editor, because it's all text! Right click on a textarea, select "It's All Text!" and edit the text in the editor of your choice. Alternatively, click on the edit buttons added for your convenience.
Texto [mozilla.org]
Open textareas in an external application
Textarea viEditor [mozilla.org]
Enable to edit the textarea/input element by like vim operation
I tried the first two and kept "It's all Text". Although you can conceivably use Stylish to mod the textarea to your liking.
Did you even read Linus' release notice? (Score:4, Informative)
fanotify syscalls are disabled because people still can't agree on the API.
Whether a file has changed = complex? (Score:5, Interesting)
What the hell is it with file notification? It never seems to be reliable or stable. There was inotify, dnotify, fsnotify, fam, gamin, incrond... and since fam/gamin always ended up using 100% CPU or causing other problems, I've just avoided the whole idea, even though I regularly think of situations that I could use incrond in.
I would have thought that setting a flag/triggering an event when a file was altered would be a matter of adding a small queue/bit system for events and about one line of code to vfs functions that modify files, but obviously not.
So... does anyone use incrond and get good, reliable results? Will fanotify help at all?
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I've used incron on production boxen heavily over the past couple years and haven't noticed any problems with it, personally.
fanotify looks pretty sweet, though. Eric Paris made a sort of introductory post about it last year, which is a good read:
http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/7/24/242 [lkml.org]
Particularly interesting is his idea of adding 'rename' events. This would mean you could implement something like 'updatedb' in realtime, and always have current results for 'locate'. Not sure if the rename events made it in or no
Re:Whether a file has changed = complex? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this a case of linux kernel developers copying features that are in the Mac OS X darwin kernel?
Doubtful. This is really an area of natural evolution. Meaning, first to market, if that is in fact really the case, hardly means everyone else is copying what is really an obvious and extremely simple idea.
For example, planes needed to go faster. Solution, make them more aerodynamic. When everyone started making planes more aerodynamic, does that really mean everyone copied the first to do so? Hardly. It means, they all understood the problem and someone was simply first to market.
Now if you have something which indicates the APIs on OSX are particularly clever in exposing this feature and that everyone is copying those APIs, you might have a point, but I don't see you arguing that position.
Believe it or not, humanity frequently, independently, suffers from a natural progression of ideas. The fact that this occurs more or less validates no one is copying.
Case in point: I want to know when a file changes. In what ways can a file change? Those are natural progressions in seeking a solution to an extremely common problem. If you answer my question, does that you too are copying?
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or just copying features [microsoft.com] that have been around since Windows 2000?
Best watchit doesn't vioate some patent :)
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OS X uses FSevents [arstechnica.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FSEvents [wikipedia.org]
There's even a cool GUI fseventer [fernlightning.com] so you can track what gets written and where.
Re:Whether a file has changed = complex? (Score:5, Interesting)
fanotify seems interesting because it allows you to watch for arbitrary events on a global basis without specifying which file descriptors you want to watch. It seems to pass the actual file descriptor back to the original object. You read events via getsockopt().
So, for example, it's very easy to say "notify me of all file open events", for example.
You can also do the opposite of a global watch, of course, and have it watch for specific file events, much like inotify.
As I understand it, fanotify came about because of vendor demand for an efficient, non-hackish way to watch for arbitrary filesystem events without ever specifying precise files, paths, etc. An example would be malware vendors.
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Er, "for example...for example". Great proofreading there. And I meant ANTI-malware vendors, of course...
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And I meant ANTI-malware vendors, of course...
Same thing.
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Re:Whether a file has changed = complex? (Score:5, Insightful)
There was inotify, dnotify, fsnotify, fam, gamin, incrond... and since fam/gamin always ended up using 100% CPU or causing other problems
Of those, only inotify and dnotify were userspace-facing solutions in the stock kernel. Fsnotify was a backend, intentionally preparing the way for fanotify, and it was never intended to be used directly. Fam and gamin are third-party, and unless you know you specifically need them, you should avoid. Incrond is a great userspace program to use inotify... but not an alternative to anything in that list.
Dnotify was something of an embarrassment, but inotify's been with us a while and it's worked well. Fanotify is an evolution of that, to fix architectural problems that have led to race conditions and scalability concerns. Inotify (and dnotify) is being reimplemented on top of it, so if the inotify interface doesn't cause any problems for you, plan to continue using it (and incrond if you like)!
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Curious - what problems did you have with inotify? I was looking at it recently to handle some screwy file sharing needs, and it seemed to work well as far as I went with it. In the actual event, we didn't end up needing it, so I never went past some light testing. But if there's issues, it would be good to know next time it comes up.
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Y'know, it would be great if you could edit your own posts, so that when you type "inotify" but mean "incrond" you could correct yourself.
Bother.
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Have you tried using a distribution, instead of throwing random versions of different software onto a system and hoping it magically all works together?
"Linux on the desktop" will happen (and does happen) through distributions.
Mirror here: (Score:3, Informative)
But ... (Score:5, Funny)
I thought linux was up to version 10.10? (Maverick something)
Re:But ... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:But ... (Score:5, Informative)
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Compressed RAM? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Linux news AGAIN?! (Score:3, Funny)
How come Slashdot keeps posting stuff about Linux? Where are our Apple-related news? Lion, iLife '11, FaceTime for Mac and new MacBook Air notebooks were announced yesterday! We never speak about Apple it's always Linux, Linux, Linux! *
* for the slow-minded, this is a parody of the "Apple news again? We never get any Linux news!" posts. As long as it's not freakin' Microsoft, I'm fine with it.
Apple Version (Score:5, Funny)
How come Slashdot keeps posting stuff about Linux? Where are our Apple-related news? Lion, iLife '11, FaceTime for Mac and new MacBook Air notebooks were announced yesterday! We never speak about Apple it's always Linux, Linux, Linux! *
* for the slow-minded, this is a parody of the "Apple news again? We never get any Linux news!" posts. As long as it's not freakin' Microsoft, I'm fine with it.
Here, I'll make an Apple user feel right at home:
The newest version of Linux, Snow Penguin, has been released and this changes everything! This version includes support for the Tilera architecture, a beautiful new filesystem notification interface called iNotify, Spacewarp local caching, support for Intel Intelligent Power Sharing so your computer will otomaticaly [spelled correctly] turn off unused appliances in your house to save you thousands of dollars in power bills every year, developer improvements and a revolutionary AppArmor security system. It's speedy. It works–better. See the full keynote for more details.
Dammit... (Score:4, Funny)
How come Slashdot keeps posting stuff about Linux? Where are our Apple-related news? Lion, iLife '11, FaceTime for Mac and new MacBook Air notebooks were announced yesterday! We never speak about Apple it's always Linux, Linux, Linux! *
* for the slow-minded, this is a parody of the "Apple news again? We never get any Linux news!" posts. As long as it's not freakin' Microsoft, I'm fine with it.
Here, I'll make an Apple user feel right at home: The newest version of Linux, Snow Penguin, has been released and this changes everything! This version includes support for the Tilera architecture, a beautiful new filesystem notification interface called iNotify, Spacewarp local caching, support for Intel Intelligent Power Sharing so your computer will otomaticaly [spelled correctly] turn off unused appliances in your house to save you thousands of dollars in power bills every year, developer improvements and a revolutionary AppArmor security system. It's speedy. It works–better. See the full keynote for more details.
Dammit...I forgot to call it "magic."
2.6.36 compiles with intel c (Score:2, Informative)
damn, just compiled 2.6.36RC8 to fix suspend issues on thinkpad x200.
ps it compiled out of box (no patches) with icc and intel libraries!
the right to be scared (Score:2)
Accroding to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TILE64 [wikipedia.org] the Tilera CTO and co-founder is Anant Agarwal. According to http://www.csail.mit.edu/user/723 [mit.edu] he is from Madras, India.
Imagine all Indian computer gurus moving back to India, backed by the wealth of Tata (www.tata.com) or the like.
Do you think China and other high focus companies have the right to be scared?
Yet, before then, show me the benchmarks
Re:the right to be scared (Score:4, Funny)
...Anant Agarwal...
Is this the new Ubuntu distribution, or what?
Ready? I'm coming... (Score:2)
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So what's that all about? Is it ready for the desktop yet? Will it upgrade nicely for the cousins I have persuaded to use Ubuntu, and whose schoolchildren are still puzzled?
This is the kernel. Direct your arguments to GNOME/KDE/Canonical and so on. The kernel is what the distributions themselves are based on. Personally, I'd recommend Fedora/Linux Mint any day over Ubuntu (especially Mint Debian Edition, which is a rolling release distribution, meaning no twice-yearly, buggy upgrades!) for family usage. Also, note that "ready for the desktop" is a very relative statement. To me, it's more than perfect, but to people that want to run MS Office, Photoshop, windows/mac only niche
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In other words, Loonix is not ready for the mainstream desktop user.
There, fixed that for you
Re:And yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem that prevents flash from playing fullscreen is that it's closed source crap, not that Linux is in any way incomplete.
Thankyou! (Score:2)
Now where did I leave those mod points...
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The problem that prevents flash from playing fullscreen is that it's closed source crap, not that Linux is in any way incomplete.
Yup, that's 100% Adobe's fault... and also 100% Linux problem.
Re:And yet? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, the problem isn't incompleteness it's the fact that one has to traverse a jungle of incompatible audio and video APIs to make sure it even works at all across the various distributions.
Then how come mplayer works on every common Linux distribution, and has been able to do smooth fullscreen video for as long as I can remember?
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Then how come mplayer works on every common Linux distribution, and has been able to do smooth fullscreen video for as long as I can remember?
That's a bug they've been trying to chase down for years.
I keed, I keed
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1. full screen flash works fine on my linux machines
2. mplayer seems never to have such issues, so more likely flash just sucks.
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Re:And yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
If it was a Microsoft troll shouldn't it be about Silverlight and mono?
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No, he's not trolling Adobe fans (if there actually ARE Adobe fans), he's trolling Linux users.
Re:And yet? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, all the relevant particulars of Flash are openly available (see Adobe's Open Screen project). The big exception is Sorenson Spark, but that's already available via ffmpeg. Basically, Gnash just isn't there yet.
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>Basically, Gnash just isn't there yet.
Some real progress was made in the early development of Gnash. There were people underwriting the project who were willing and able to pay a living wage to developers who could finish it, but that talent didn't really come forward. Those people have pretty much moved on to other projects. (You know who you are, and I know way more about this than I'm going to say in a slashdot post.) I was plugged into the Gnash project for a while, and I thought it was really
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Yes Apple, the same company that runs this site: http://www.opensource.apple.com/ [apple.com] They are big contributors and users of open source.
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Fair enough. I was responding in the context of open/close source code, not openness as an abstract concept.
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Ask Adobe if it can play Flash. It's their product after all.
Re:And yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
http://freshmeat.net/projects/loonix/ [freshmeat.net]
I'm guessing it doesn't play flash since it's a server distribution. Silly question really.
Re:And yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Exactly. And, to be honest, I don't really care. I wouldn't even consider taking the time to view a full-length Flash movie. Flash support for Linux is more than adequate for viewing crappy YouTube movie clips, which is just about all Flash is good for in the first place.
Many site designers seem to think it's cool to embed the entire content of their webpage into a Flash presentation, but I find this irritating enough that unless I have already decided I am really keen
Re:And yet? (Score:4, Informative)
But can it play fullscreen flash video smoothly yet?
Yes.
Well, Ubuntu 10.04 on my laptop certainly doesn't seem to have any problem playing full screen Flash video. However, flash does hog the audio so I have to kill the damn thing if I want to play sound from anything else.
If there's one valid complaint in your post it's the crappy state of audio on Linux.
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it's the crappy state of both kinds of audio on Linux. that's the only place in the GNU/Linux realm where having choices don't seem to be a good idea (when they're both bad)
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No, it is flash not talking to pulse like it should. The Flash linux developer is either lazy or incompetent.
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However, flash does hog the audio so I have to kill the damn thing if I want to play sound from anything else.
Doesn't ubuntu use pulse audio by default? It might be because of it..
I only have alsa in my laptop, no alsa config files created, and everything can play concurrently. Even closed source applications like flash and skype access alsa using dmix so they don't hog the audio device anymore.
Despite for network audio (which jack also do, and do better) I don't really see why pulseaudio is needed.
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Despite for network audio (which jack also do, and do better) I don't really see why pulseaudio is needed.
s/do\([^n]\)/does\1/g
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Re:Great... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great... (Score:4, Insightful)
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"Microsoft announces Windows SteadyState will no longer be available after December 31, 2010. Microsoft will continue to let users to download the software through December 31, 2010. Support for Windows SteadyState will continue to be available through the Microsoft Knowledge Base portal through June 30, 2011."
From the article you linked, it looks like it's part of MS's network software, not Windows. AND they're killing it in two months.
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The problem is in the fragmentation of distributions and the fragmentation in the GUI.
True. We should only have one auto manufacturer making one model of car too, because having so many companies selling so many different types of car is terribly confusing.
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I use my linux desktop at work every day, and my linux laptop at home every day. My wireless router runs linux every day, and the several embedded products I'm working on run linux every day (when I haven't broken something...).
I have a car and a motorcycle that I can use to get to work or wherever every day. Neither are suitable for transporting cattle, but then that's not an issue for me. Your reasoning is that because you presumably have some situation for which no distribution fits your needs then al
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How about having many manufacturers procude one model of car and one model of truck? That would standardize parts and lower the cost. We get to keep competition with the multiple manufacturers and they get a better cost per part because of the higher production quantities.
Then again, if everybody sells the exact same thing, we'll probably get price collusion problems. Maybe standardize all the structural and mechanical parts and let them customize the exterior panels and interior features (A/C or not, MP3 p
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The problem is in the fragmentation of distributions and the fragmentation in the GUI.
True. We should only have one auto manufacturer making one model of car too, because having so many companies selling so many different types of car is terribly confusing.
But they all have the same UI...
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Which is why people almost exclusively buy Chevy or Ford or (insert your brand of choice here) to the point where a family will only drive Fords or Toyotas or Hyundais.
It's not nearly as noticeable though, because buying a new car happens only slightly more often than buying a new house. It's nowhere near as commonplace as a piece of consumer electronic like the PC, but the concepts of familiarity and level of comfort remain the same. People are uncomfortable with a lot of choices, to the point where they m
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Hey dumbass !! Did he say ONE Linux would be better? NO !! He said it's FRAGMENTED. That means there are too many. Why does the solution to fragmentation always have to be ONE version instead?
Troll.
So what is the ONE TRUE CORRECT NUMBER of Linux versions? Two? Three? Six? Forty-Two?
What should be the punishment for anyone who decides to release a new distro once we have the ONE TRUE CORRECT NUMBER of distros? Burning at the stake? Removal of git commit privileges?
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The problem from a commercial standpoint is that a binary for one distro just doesnt work on another, and even within the same distro there are frequent compatibility breaks between versions.
Add to this the plethora of windowing managers, audio stacks, and so on that the users themselves can go ahead and replace. It is at this point that you realize that you've gone well past the line where fragmentation is a valid criticism.
Nobody can point to some specif
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Stop releasing binaries, give us source. That solves the problem right there.
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What makes you think that people who work on a distribution would work on another if there wouldn't be for the one that they work on? Since they are not doing it now it means they have reasons not to do it.
That applies in corporate world too, do you think that people who work for Apple would work for Microsoft if there wouldn't be Apple?
And here we were actually talking about a new version of the kernel, not about any distribution, why do you troll?
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This article is about the kernel. If you have problems with your GUI, take it up with your distro.
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(cue many replies about how this is a good thing)
Agreed. If you look at how many Linux distro's there are, where they came from / how they are built, there are essentially a small number: some Fedora (.rpm) based, some Debian (.deb) based, some Slackware (plain .tar.gz), and a small number of distro's that have their own system for building packages from source (Gentoo & a few others).
Beyond that, practically all other distro's are just one of those above, with a specific package selection, a set of
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Offtopic? (Score:2)
The new kernels are OK since long now. A few new things and a lot more fixes. But what's that for if the distros are leaving it behind as well as creating a whole new mess with their idiosyncracies.
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But to get an autographed copy of that CHANGELOG on ebay...