Linux 2.4.0-prerelease is Released 129
Mark Bobak writes "2.4.0 should be ready soon. 2.4.0-test12 has been superceded
by a new release, and it's not a testxx. It's 2.4.0-prerelease.
Can't wait for the real thing....I can almost taste it! ;-)
Available, of course, at kernel.org" And happy new years to everyone else. Hopefully holiday traffic will be light enough that we can all share the bandwidth to the mirrors. I shall download while I watch the Iron Chef marathon :)
Re:What's The Benefit? (Score:1)
Direct rendering (DRM) not compatibe with X4 ? (Score:1)
Re:This can't be! (Score:1)
Chill out man...
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Re:Linux vs macosx (Score:2)
Re:Linux 2.4 isn't vaporware, honest!!! (Score:1)
Uhh, Linus and Alen themselves said it was going to be finished (as in non-test release) a YEAR ago. So much for not missing deadlines or released dates.
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Re:Wirex warning (Score:1)
Odd, but I include a patch for 2.4.0-test8 on the Immunix CD, and on our web site right here [immunix.org]. It applies with some fuzz on 2.4.0-test12, and I'll update again on Tues for this release.
I've also been releasing this patch on the linux-kernel mailing list, as well as the stackguard mailing list for the past couple of months.
And if you have any problems with this distro, the developers are all on the stackguard mailing list, and very responsive.
As for it not being a kernel hackers special I would dispute that, as I do all of my kernel work on this os
greg k-h
greg@(kroah|wirex).com
Re:looks like you missed pre-release (Score:1)
Re:Your .sig (Score:1)
Re:This can't be! (Score:1)
Re:How long has it taken? (Score:2)
Re:Linux 2.4 isn't vaporware, honest!!! (Score:1)
Re:Monolithic kernel design (Score:2)
but C++ compilers are crap.
Even tiny problems like the red hat 7.0 gcc would be enormous if the kernel was written in C++. C compilers are relatively simple to implement and this makes them more reliable.
(gcc 3.0 will cure cancer of course. But it's not finished yet.)
Re:So is this the only prerelease? (Score:1)
Nope, this is it. (Score:4)
Ok. I didn't make 2.4.0 in 2000. Tough. I tried, but we had some last-minute stuff that needed fixing (ie the dirty page lists etc), and the best I can do is make a prerelease.
There's a 2.4.0-prerelease out there, and this is basically it. I want people to test it for a while, and I want to give other architectures the chance to catch up with some of the changes, but read my lips: no more recounts. There is no "prerelease1", to become "prerelease2" and so on.
One thing other architectures will want to catch up with is the changes to handle 2GHz+ machines, which due to overflow issues caused "loops_per_sec" to become "loops_per_jiffy". And some architectures have not had much chance to synchronize with me due to other fires to put out.
Give it your worst. After you recover from being hung-over, of course.
Linus
Re:What's The Benefit? (Score:2)
Re:/dev/random (Score:1)
Re:Monolithic kernel design (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, right (Score:2)
Re:What's The Benefit? (Score:2)
I patched to the prerelease (tho test12 gave me no problems) because I wanted to help Linus out (however infinitesimally) by making sure everything ran ok on my system before the official release, not because I expected my kernel to start doing anything worthwhile -- kernels don't really have to "do" anything; they just have to stay out the way and not crash.
Re:2.4.0 not in 2000, but that's ok... (Score:2)
Re:2.4.0 not in 2000, but that's ok... (Score:2)
You forgot Debian.
Debian doesn't require you to recompile to upgrade. ( But of course Debian has it's own set of problems )
But in general, I would say upgrading the kernel in Debian is much easier than when I had to do it in Windows 2000.
Re:older hardware performance? (Score:1)
Re:looks like you missed pre-release (Score:2)
In the past 6 months, I've had one kernel panic under Linux ( with test kernels), 100+ crashes with win98/WinME and about 10 with W2K.
If this kernel has no show stoppers, it will be the fork for stable 2.4 and 2.5 devel. Thanks Linus, Alan and crew. I enjoy the fruits of your labor daily. I also endure the stench of the MS crowds labor daily during work.
YAY IRON CHEF! (Score:1)
well? (Score:1)
i think you can have the bandwidth to yourself on this one.
Re:Kernelnotes.org (Score:2)
Really? Can it be true? (Score:1)
Please Linus... Don't tease us...
um.. I done, you can stop reading...
Change list (Score:1)
How long has it taken? (Score:2)
I'm not trying to flame the kernel developers for late releases, it's just an intrigue. Take your time, guys, because we run servers that depend on your code!
Looks like MS missed public beta (Score:1)
Microsoft delays release of Windows 2000, and the Linux community screams in delight that it must really suck, despite the pretty-damn-stable RC builds
Were the Win2kRC? releases available to the public? (No, I'm not talking about d.net [distributed.net]'s RC5 brute-forcer either.) The Mac OS 10 beta and Linux 2.4 beta are both OutNow. The 2.4-test releases are betas; this article is about Linux 2.4 RC1.
No wait, every Microsoft operating system release is a public beta.
When will MS finally release a VHS (very high security) product instead of a beta?Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo [pineight.com].
Thank goodness (Score:1)
Spares us the debate about which is the first major Linux kernel release of the new millenium.
Kernelnotes.org (Score:2)
Cool (Score:2)
2.4-alpha ?
2.4-beta ?
2.4-pre-test ?
2.4-devel ?
2.4-let's-invent-some-other-tag-for-a-year-late
what's wrong with 2.3.x, and when it's ready call it 2.4.0.
Re:Linux 2.4 isn't vaporware, honest!!! (Score:1)
Karma my ass (Score:1)
I'm just grateful towards the people who develop and create the free tools I need and use to make me lots of money so I can buy cars, snowmobiles and dirt bikes, pay my house, put beer in my fridge and food in my mouth.
Question: Upgrading to 2.4 (Score:2)
Or are there issues like we had from 1.2 --> 2.0?
Linux Quality Database Project (Score:2)
It will also serve as an advocacy and education site to improve the quality of Free Software in general.
If you want to participate, please contact me at crawford@goingware.com [mailto] or subscribe to the mailing list - instructions are on the site.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
Don't pressure the distros to adopt 2.4.0 (Score:2)
But distros are used widely by inexperienced users and this is code that is not extensively tested. Many people get their first and only experienced with Linux from some CD they buy off a store shelf for $29.
Yes, it has been worked on for years but it has not been used in production that much.
It would be better if most of the initial users of 2.4.0 were users who were competent to download and build their own kernels, until the bugs that will inevitably crop up in widespread use are found.
Then let the distros ship with 2.4.1.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
Re:hmm? (Score:1)
2.2-alpha-3
2.2-ex-2-plus
2.2-ex-3
If Capcom simply named them in order that they were made, there would be as many number SF games as Emacs major releases... Hell, there would probably be as many as Emacs minor releases, too.
Re:What's The Benefit? (Score:1)
Umm, yeah have you ever tried to use USB on Win95? NT doesn't support USB. There are three MS OSes that *really* support USB, they are Win98se, Win2K professional, and Me. These are all relatively new.
Re:Wirex warning (Score:1)
Cheers Greg! I plan on using their help in the near future.
Re:Your .sig (Score:1)
Re:How long has it taken? (Score:1)
Re:Question: Upgrading to 2.4 (Score:3)
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hmm? (Score:2)
Running W2K for almost year (Score:1)
It is not there... (Score:1)
Re:What's The Benefit? (Score:2)
Re:What's The Benefit? (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, right (Score:1)
Total delivered: zero
Total releases of BeOS promised in the last year: one
Total delivered: one
Re:What's The Benefit? (Score:1)
Re:Linux kernel numbering schema.. (Score:1)
Re:Your .sig (Score:2)
I don't steal other people's "intellectual property". I buy all my music, on CD. I buy all my books, on paper. All the software I run is free software, mostly GPL. Fuck you and your assumptions.
I can see why. If you had posted under your own name, that baseless, ill-conceived rant would come back to haunt you.
Everyone knows who I am and that it's me telling you (whoever you are) to go fuck yourself.
--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
Re:CAUTION: GOATSE.CX LINK! (Score:1)
this sig is funny. [8op.com] laugh.
Re:Question: Upgrading to 2.4 (Score:1)
Re:Cool (Score:1)
Re:Yeah, right (Score:1)
Re:How long has it taken? (Score:1)
A shoddy VM? the new 2.4 VM is very similar to FreeBSD's. Matt Dillon even reviewed the design. The Linux scheduler works quite well for a vast array of workloads. From very low latency media work to high-throughput webservers. FreeBSD is slightly better for throughput oriented tests, but only because they sacrifice latency for throughput. Ask anyone who has done serious real time audio work what they think of FreeBSD. Its not a pretty sight. BeOS and linux are pretty much the only contenders here.
Let me ask you a question. What's faster, 2.0 or 2.2? Sorry, the answer is 2.0. What about 2.2 and 2.4? Close, but the answer is 2.2.
This is so ridiculous that it hardly even warrants a response. Care to specify benchmarks? I find 2.4 signifigantly faster for most of my day to day work, but obviously I can come up with pathological cases. I can do the same with FreeBSD 4.1, but it doesn't really prove anything.
I enjoyed being in the FreeBSD community a lot more before the OS snobs moved in from linux when it got too "mainstream" for them. The developers have a fairly realistic view of the relative advantages of FreeBSD and Linux. Why can't the non-coding OS zealots learn from them?
Re:Linux 2.4 isn't vaporware, honest!!! (Score:1)
On the whole, this looks like symptoms of Linux becoming a seriously regarded system, with all the problems that implies. Once people start tying full-on commercial decisions and "face" to a software product, on the basis of promises -- real or inferred -- from developers, then there's considerable pressure to be seen to produce something. Particularly when the product is in a rather competitive environment and the release promises to plug some fairly obvious gaps vis a vis ones competitors.
There's nothing particularly bad about this. (And I'd rather a late stable release than an early, flakey release any day. Although it's not like I have anything much riding on 2.4.0.) But I think the Linux community should be prepared for a lot of this kind of thing; not just from the kernel, but from other high-profile packages, as well.
Linux kernel numbering schema.. (Score:1)
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Re:Looks like MS missed public beta (Score:1)
Re:Change list (Score:2)
This page [linuxhq.com] should get you started on the significant differences...
Re:To everybody out there already at the AM time.. (Score:2)
Monolithic kernel design (Score:1)
i know the microkernel design has it's flaws, but surely it has more potential in terms of ease of use, and maintainability? to a new user, having to rebuild the kernel when you buy a new device would seem difficult (although it's not, but it sounds daunting at first).
just how much work would it take to re-design the current code, and port the modules?
NB:I'm not trying to have a go at linux/unix here, just my thoughts.
Sadly infantile behaviour... (Score:1)
But this was just sad and lame.
Test13 = Unlucky (Score:1)
-Compenguin
Re:Linux 2.4 isn't vaporware, honest!!! (Score:1)
Re:Question: Upgrading to 2.4 (Score:3)
It is there to address this exact question.
-Peter
Re:It is not there... (Score:1)
-Compenguin
Re:This can't be! (Score:1)
Perhaps we should limit distribution of mod points to those who posess an IQ greater than the sum of their granted mod points.
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seumas.com
Re:What's The Benefit? (Score:1)
Trouble???
It takes about 1/2 hour to upgrade a kernel, the longest task is the compiling!
::shrug::
-SP
Intelectual property. (Score:1)
How can you own information in my mind?
And how is small information '2+2=4' different from a lot of info, like a software program?
Re:What about Debian Woody? (Score:2)
Otherwise, I believe 2.4 drops pretty much straight into woody.
Re:Looks like MS missed public beta (Score:1)
Re:What about Debian Woody? (Score:2)
Re:Question: Upgrading to 2.4 (Score:1)
no need to download the whole thing for that file...
it's at:2 .4/changes24.html [gatech.edu]
http://cyberbuzz.gatech.edu/kaboom/linux/Changes-
Re:What about Debian Woody? (Score:2)
Officially, I don't know, I don't monitor the devel lists.
However, it's reasonably easy to manually drop in any kernel you want. I'm currently running 2.4.0-test11 on my woody box, and it's running great!
Here's how:
This is explained much more verbosely in the documentation that comes with kernel-package, but I had few problems with the process, and I'm no expert. The process is very smooth. I like it.
What version is currently in Woody?
2.2.17 and 2.2.18pre21, it seems.
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Re:Don't pressure the distros to adopt 2.4.0 (Score:1)
Happy New Year (Score:2)
Wow, before leaving for this year's party, I just finished my dist-upgrade, leaving me with such wonders as a new init, XFree86 4.0.2, and some other new, good things. Just this morning, I also managed to get DRI working with my i810 chipset.
Now, at 2:25am, as Octave compiles (it appears dist-upgrade broke Octave, plus a computing-intensive application ought to be optimized for my system), I download 2.4.0-prerelease. I can't think of a better way to usher in 2001 then with a new mathematical package, a new compiler (minor updates to gcc 2.95.2 packages, I guess), a new windowing system, a new direct rendering infrastructure, and now, to top it all, a new kernel.
If you ask me, life is good. I find it hard to imagine that in the future, such things as having the latest kernel and windowing system will not mattter to me. But now, in my youth, I am content.
Happy New Year. I will continue enjoying the year until spring semester starts up, but that is two weeks away...
I see my kernel is finished downloading, and Octave is about wrapped up... That means time to go.
A new year calls for a new signature.
Re:Monolithic kernel design (Score:2)
Wirex warning (Score:1)
Re:Question: Upgrading to 2.4 (Score:1)
-Compenguin
Re:hmm? (Score:2)
2.2
2.2-turbo
super-2.2
super-2.2-turbo
2.2-alpha
2.2-alpha-2
super-2.2-alpha
super-2.2-alpha-ex
super-2.2-alpha-ex-2
If you don't get it, its probably because you don't remember many years and numerous extensions to Street Fighter 2 that SF fans went through waiting for Capcom to finally release Street Fighter 3.
Re:Question: Upgrading to 2.4 (Score:1)
Re:2.4.0 not in 2000, but that's ok... (Score:1)
Re:2.4.0 not in 2000, but that's ok... (Score:3)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Right. The fact that it is as stable as Linux, that DirectX 8 whips the hell out of anything Linux has, and the fact that the hardware support and OpenGL perfromance of Win2K still beat Linux aren't really important, are they? Not to mention the advantages Win2K has for notebooks (better power management) and all the features that the GUI has that GNOME/KDE are still lacking (they're there, but immature, and not yet pervasively used.)
There is STILL a lot of settings that you can't change without having to reboot the computer. That's crap.
>>>>>>
Who cares? You only configure your computer once in awhile!
For a "production" machine, you shouldn't have to do that.
>>>>>>
Therin lies the rub. You're thinking from a server standpoint.
With Linux, the ONLY thing you have to restart for is a kernel rebuild, which is very rarely necessary.
>>>>>>>>>>
Except to add support for stuff that your distro maker didn't think was important to put in. For stable distros like Slack, that means ALSA, ReiserFS, firewalls, etc. Then you have the fact (that unless you use RedHat or Mandrake, which bring their own set of problems) you cannot upgrade the kernel (realistically) without recompiling!
This can't be! (Score:5)
Latency improvements? (Score:3)
steveha
Linux 2.4 isn't vaporware, honest!!! (Score:3)
Re:Your .sig (Score:2)
Correct Translation: The whole concept of "intellectual property" is damaging to humanity as a whole and should be done away with.
--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
Re:So is this the only prerelease? (Score:4)
Re:I dunno.. (Score:2)
Better yet are shell scripts that filter out your cookies after they have been saved to disk. That way you can use a cookie-requiring site, and come back the next day with no tracking info.
Almost no problems (Score:2)
Of course, if you've upgraded to Red Hat 7 (like I have), you've got 50 other updates [redhat.com] you'll want to download, so don't feel too special.
Re:Question: Upgrading to 2.4 (Score:2)
you got to be kidding.
Thanks to the other poster for the modutils tip. I've taken 2.3.23
Mirrors? (Score:2)
Mirrors? Are you kidding me? Kernel.org has a huge amount of donated bandwidth, I don't think they're going to suffer from the "Slashdot effect" anytime soon. In fact, on their homepage, they say that their current bandwidth utilization is 25.52Mbits, hardly even a third of their available bandwidth.
Re:This can't be! (Score:2)
What about Debian Woody? (Score:2)
Re:Your .sig (Score:2)
Wow! You can see the future!
Maybe you can tell us when we'll be getting our flying cars and personal robots.
--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
Re:Monolithic kernel design (Score:2)
In the current Linux kernel, there are few constraints on what part of the kernel a module can depend on or what data structures it can modify. And any fault in a kernel module can cause the whole kernel to crash.
Both of those issues make it really difficult for people to add new functionality to the kernel, and I think are significantly responsible for the long release cycles.
A microkernel isn't the only approach to achieving this kind of modularity--using a language with a little bit more error checking and support for interfaces would do the same thing without the overhead of a microkernel design. And adding runtime support for C++, natively-compiled Java, a JIT, Modula-2, Oberon, Modula-3, or any of a number of a number of other languages would be feasible. But my impression is that that would not stand a chance of making it into the distribution even as an optional module.
Linus' explanation (Score:5)