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Kernel 2.2 - It Lives! 502

Posted by michael from the if-it-ain't-broke dept.
Build6 writes "For those of us still using 2.2 (how's that for "conservatism" eh?) -- 2.2.24 is out (and has been since last week) - see kernel.org for downloads. I see networking code tweaks, but no changelog. Time to give our old RH 6.2 machines one last kernel-recompile before Red Hat's end-of-life date arrives for 6.2? :-) What I'd like to know is - who else (besides me) out there still has machines running 2.2 and intends to keep it that way?"
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Kernel 2.2 - It Lives! More

Kernel 2.2 - It Lives!

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  • Kernel Series 2.2 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Scoria ( 264473 ) <{slashmail} {at} {initialized.org}> on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:16PM (#5473758) Homepage
    Although Linux 2.2 may eventually become relatively obscure, I wouldn't anticipate its disappearance. It will almost certainly remain a viable contender for certain embedded and esoteric applications.
  • i have thought of giving my 386 running 6.x to my four-year-old (and letting him have my 2400b modem to connect to the net). i have a 200mHz running mandrake 7. but i really like my friend's 233 running Red Hat 8. it's so simple, even my mother could use it.

  • Why 2.2? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by York the Mysterious ( 556824 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:17PM (#5473764) Homepage
    This is a real question not flame bait. Why would you keep 2.2? What is there in 2.4 that makes it so bad? It seems like it's pretty mature now so what's wrong with it?

    -Tim

    • Simple (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:22PM (#5473793)
      It works.

      I ran a firewall off of my 2.2.23 box all set up to be secure to the outside and provide a fileserver/print server to the inside as well as being a DSL and dial-up router.

      Why would I upgrade and possibly break something?

      It does not need X, it is a PII-400, and it does not do anything that is so intensive it needs 2.4

      Long live 2.2

      • Re:Simple (Score:3, Insightful)

        by error0x100 ( 516413 )

        I have a Pentium 166 (64 MB RAM, 2GB HD) running RedHat 6.1 w kernel 2.2 set up as a dial-up router, running squid as a web proxy (with sleezeball to block ads), plus a bit of file sharing and a remote X desktop with icewm over VNC. I am pondering loading RH 8.0 onto the machine, but quite frankly, the current system works, and it works well and fast.

      • Re:Simple (Score:5, Interesting)

        by AchilleTalon ( 540925 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @11:05PM (#5474248) Homepage
        I still have my 486 with 16MB memory running a firewall/DSL router. It is now near 10 years old and still running. This machine is never powered-off, unless there is a black-out. The only problem I had was with the CPU fan I replaced many years ago and the power-supply fan I replaced about two years ago.

        Linux Kernel 2.2.X has been continuously updated on this machine without a glitch.

        This machine has seen pre-1.0 kernels and was my first PC. I just don't remember the very early Linux distributions I tested on this machine. For sure, Slackware was installed on it at some point in its life.

      • Re:Simple (Score:3, Informative)

        by Eil ( 82413 )

        It does not need X, it is a PII-400, and it does not do anything that is so intensive it needs 2.4

        Err, I hope you aren't implying that 2.4 is either bloaty or slow or both on older hardware.

        I used 2.4.18 just fine for over a year on a Pentium 166 (no MMX) and had absolutely zero problems. This box was my broadband firewall and also served 60 GB of NFS, as well as SMB, ssh, mail, and apache 2.x web pages, both static and generated. (I know you're not supposed to combine your firewall and other stuff, but I had no choice at the time.) Anyway, this box did its job(s) flawlessly without a single complaint and though building a kernel took on the order of 50 minutes, most things happened instantaneously.

        I decided to upgrade it to a Celeron 366 only after I started using a python-based wiki on a daily basis for note-taking. If I really wanted to, I could have hacked up my own program in C that would have been 10x faster but I had the spare hardware and figured I might as well retire the 166. Given all of the improvements of the 2.4 kernel series, I highly doubt that 2.2 is significantly faster than 2.4 (for the same tasks) on all but the very oldest hardware.

        The only places that I think would want 2.2 over 2.4 are organizations that have mission-critical stuff running on 2.2 and aren't keen to fix that which isn't broken (if you'll pardon the cliche). Other than that, using 2.4 for most tasks is simply NOT going to cause armageddon. And also remember too that just because some piece of software is OLD doesn't automatically mean it's more STABLE.

      • Re:Simple (Score:4, Informative)

        by pheared ( 446683 ) <[ten.deraehp] [ta] [nivek]> on Monday March 10, 2003 @12:09AM (#5474530) Homepage
        If you run a firewall, all the more reason to upgrade to 2.4. Netfilter is far superior to ipchains, in my opinion.

        Of course, you may not currently need stateful inspection, but you don't even have the option with 2.2. If you come to a point where you do, you're out of luck. (unless there is a current reliable backport out there, which is possible)

        • Re:Simple (Score:3, Informative)

          by DrXym ( 126579 )
          It certainly is superior, however from my own experience of moving up, you have to bite the bullet and rewrite your firewall script. While you could leave everything using ipchains, (2.4 has an ipchains module after all), distributions such as Red Hat don't like it very much and some of the network tools won't work when ipchains is running. IP Masquerading (NAT) and VPN also just works which is a compelling reason in itself. If you want VPN in 2.2 you have to arse around downloading kernel patches to enable it.


          It's better to rewrite everything to use iptables, though this does require some effort since the syntax is not quite the same. The biggest hurdle is figuring out how to log and drop a packet. In ipchains it is one command, in iptables you must create a new chain that does both actions and redirect packets to that.

    • Re:Why 2.2? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Osty ( 16825 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:34PM (#5473860)

      This is a real question not flame bait. Why would you keep 2.2? What is there in 2.4 that makes it so bad? It seems like it's pretty mature now so what's wrong with it?

      Better yet, why would you upgrade if 2.2 does everything you need? Any security patches will be back-ported, and that's the only time you really need to upgrade your kernel so long as it does everything you need already. For example, my bridge/firewall machine (P200MMX) is running a 2.2 kernel, and with the 2.4 bridging code backport, it works perfectly fine. I have absolutely no desire to spend a day with my firewall machine down while I upgrade all of the kernel dependencies, configure and build a 2.4 kernel, rewrite my firewall scripts for iptables (yeah, I know you can use the old ipchains interface with 2.4, but if you're going to do the upgrade, do the upgrade), and then work out all the gremlins from running "new" code.


      Desktops are different, because nobody cares if you have downtime with them. Servers on the other hand can cause pain when they're down, and even for a personal server the downtime is not worth the upgrade. You gain nothing, and lose quite a bit of time.


      Eventually, I'll decomission the P200 and bring the celeryonion 433 up as my bridge/firewall machine, but that's going to be timed with a move (when the machines will have to be down anyway, and it'll be a week or two before the new place has internet access). Doing it before then is pointless.

      • Agreed. Both my firewall and main server are running 2.2.x, it works well enough, so I don't plan to upgrade any time soon.

    • Re:Why 2.2? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If I had to bet my life on it I'd still use 2.2 over 2.4. To say the 2.4 series has had some rough spots is an understatment. 2.4.0 through something like 2.4.5 was less then impressive and at 2.4.10 Linux replaced the VM. It hasn't exactly been smooth sailing. I suppose by 2.4.24 I'll have that same warm feeling I do for 2.2 but so far that hasn't happened.

    • Re:Why 2.2? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 )
      Why would you keep 2.2?

      'cause upgrading a server running a bunch of stuff would take a long time to test.

    • Re:Why 2.2? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by oconnorcjo ( 242077 )
      This is a real question not flame bait. Why would you keep 2.2? What is there in 2.4 that makes it so bad? It seems like it's pretty mature now so what's wrong with it?

      Another good question is why upgrade?

      2.2 is a good system and has served many of us well. Linux 2.4 really only became stable and available in 2002. For people who don't live on the bleeding edge (and there is a reason it is called "bleeding"), 2.4 is just starting to be deployed. When a server runs well, upgrading it is often just a pain. I am guessing that 2.6 will come out in 2004, be stable and available in 2005 and many servers will only start migrating to it in 2006 and on slashdot some simmiliar story will be posted and somebody (maybe you) will post a simmiliar comment/question.

  • Several production servers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by benevold ( 589793 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:17PM (#5473765) Homepage Journal
    Although we are slowly phasing them out we are running quite a few machines, mostly redhat. Because of they are critical systems they have yet to be upgraded. There's one debian box that's been up for over 500 days and the kernel wasn't upgraded for a while before that! For some reason it seems to be the most stable box we have.
    • Debian use tried and tested software, their kernel sources contain quite a few bugfixes too.

      Running the vanilla sources from www.kernel.org means you sometimes miss out on some bugfixes, unless you follow kernel development.

  • Why? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by este ( 600616 ) <este@s[ ]end.net ['ubt' in gap]> on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:18PM (#5473769) Homepage Journal
    I get asked all the time.

    I've still got 2.2 on my laptop, and really, I'm happy. I don't use it for much more than mobile internet access, and as tightly compiled as I have it, I don't feel a need to go through and upgrade. Just that much more work for an overall unimportant change, a least in this situation.

    Of course, my desktop has 2.4. :-)

  • PS2 Linux users (Score:5, Informative)

    by Vardamir ( 266484 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:18PM (#5473774)
    All of us are still using 2.2 kernels, whether we like it or not.

  • Conservatism (Score:5, Funny)

    by boo__yeah ( 580069 ) <{moc.oohay} {ta} {reyals_sugam}> on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:18PM (#5473775) Homepage Journal
    For those of us still using 2.2 (how's that for "conservatism" eh?)

    So? I'm still using my Commodore 64!

    • Re:Conservatism (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:25PM (#5473814)
      So? I'm still using my Commodore 64!
      IT IS GREAT TO FINALLY MEET ANOT
      HER COMMODORE 64 USER. CAN YOU C
      ONNECT TO YOUR IPOD WITH YOUR C6
      4? I AM HAVING HARD TIME DOWNLOA
      DING MY MP3S AND DIVX FILES TO M
      Y IPOD AND THE CABLE DOES NOT SE
      EM TO WORK. I EMAILED MY FRIEND
      JONKATZ BUT HE HAS NOT RESPONDED
      YET. PLEASE HELP THANKS

      JUNIS IN AFGHANISTAN

  • Firewall distros (Score:5, Informative)

    by gilesjuk ( 604902 ) <<giles.jones> <at> <zen.co.uk>> on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:20PM (#5473782)
    There are still firewall distros on 2.2. IPCop, Smoothwall and Mandrake SNF to name three.

    IPChains is a tried and tested firewall solution, but showing its age compared to stateful packet inpection.

    Smoothwall 2.0 is in beta and now has 2.4, IPCop is moving towards 2.4 and Mandrake has MNF using 2.4.

    Debian still installs 2.2 by default.
    • You can use IPchains in 2.4, I am using it now.

    • Re:Firewall distros (Score:3, Insightful)

      by doodleboy ( 263186 )
      There are still firewall distros on 2.2. IPCop, Smoothwall and Mandrake SNF to name three.
      2.4 does have better firewall code, but as you say many popular firewall distributions are still using 2.2. I'm running (2.2 based) IPCop 1.2 on a 486/100 myself and have no problems with its performance or reliability. I'll only upgrade to the next stable branch of IPCop (based on 2.4) when they stop releasing security updates for 1.2. Why would I screw with something that works so well?

      If it weren't for Redhat EOLing 6.2 I would seriously consider it if I were doing lightly loaded server. In such cases the primary goal is stability, and 6.2 has been extremely stable in my experience.

      But basically, unless you need hardware support not well provided in 2.2 (USB, etc.) or are running loads that 2.4 is known to handle better, there just isn't that much difference between 2.2 and 2.4 for most people.

  • Fancy new software for my old POS? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Quasar1999 ( 520073 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:20PM (#5473783) Journal
    2.2? I'm still running 2.1... Works great (as a firewall)... then again, it's only a 486 DX2 66... so I don't dare fiddle with it... It might turn to dust from old age...
    • man... cant you find something more recent than that? in my closet I have a bunch of old p133's just laying around... I guess if youre network is small, a 486 is ok... but that seems a little extreme.
      • Bah! A 486 can easily handle a moderate (small office) amount of machines on a cable connection. We had one at a previous job (486dx33, 16MB RAM, no hard disk) that MASQ'ed/firewalled for 15 machines - it didn't break a sweat. I have an old P90/32MB on my DSL line (internal ADSL modem) with extensive firewall rules, acts as the smart mail relay and it also runs apache when the main server is down (minimal config - no CGI/PHP). It's never anything close to busy. Mind you, I think it's close to death now - it normally takes 3 attempts to boot, and I can hear the fan if I listen closely even though its up in my attic! I'll really have to back up the drive one day - took me about a week to get it working just right - that ASDL card was a real bitch...

  • ...that run 2.0... And of course, Debian stable is still 2.2.

  • I'm running 2.2 on a 233 MHz P2. Why? Because it's my firewall and I don't want to spend calories figuring out how to get MS Netmeeting (for vid-conferencing with the parental units) to work through anything else. It's been running for a good 2-3 years now with no hiccups. Why should I upgrade when it serves my needs perfectly?

    • Re:Firewalling (Score:2, Informative)

      by Student_Tech ( 66719 )
      I had a machine (on its 3rd motherboard, last 2 died, 1 of which had been purchased specificly for it) that is running 2.2.10 because I couldn't get the ppp stuff upgraded to work with 2.2.12 (clue to the last time I played with it). It is doing a firewall between home network and ISP (over 56K modem) and routing between the 10 Mb/s and 100 Mb/s networks at home (got some 10 only cards and a 100 only hub about 3.5-4 years ago).

    • Re:Firewalling (Score:3, Insightful)

      by darnok ( 650458 )
      Me too - I've got 2.2 running a firewall on a 100MHz Pentium box, and the box does exactly what it's supposed to do, all the time, and has only ever been rebooted in the last 4 years when there's been blackouts in my area.

      A 2.4 box would be "cooler", and would probably even have some extra capabilities that I might find useful, but the simple rule is that you don't change something that works perfectly.

  • Gateway (Score:3, Informative)

    by yoshi_mon ( 172895 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:23PM (#5473802)
    My current gateway is a AST 486SX/33 with 16 megs of RAM.

    I was able to install RH 6.2 on it and wittle the RPMs I didn't need to get it down to under 200 megs.

    While on many of my other servers I run 2.4.x, on this type of box I think 2.2.x suits my needs perfectly.

  • I have a 2.2 machine... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by powerlinekid ( 442532 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:23PM (#5473805)
    I have no idea what number it is but it runs my Mac Performa 6360 which is acting as a router. The 2.4 kernel panics anytime it tries to access the cd drive or I look at it funny. Don't get me wrong here, I use 2.4 on everything except in this one case.

  • Linux's new target market (Score:5, Interesting)

    by batobin ( 10158 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:24PM (#5473807) Homepage
    I'd say with everything I'm reading about Linux's new target market, a lot of people will leave their kernels. Why? Because they either don't know how to upgrade, or more likely, are not educated on the benefits of upgrading.

    Honestly, with the advent of Linux being sold at K-Mart, used in schools, and wielded by mouse-clicking Grandma's, there are bound to be lots of people who don't know they should upgrade their kernels. I personally think marketing Linux to these markets is important, but an equal amount of importance should be recognized in educating these new users in the basics of maintaining these systems.

    Because what good is the open source movement if the end user doesn't know how to benefit from our work?
    • Probably why Linux isn't in the top 10 of uptimes on Netcraft, people bringing the system down to change a kernel or recompile a component due to a security hole.

      It's quite true what you say Linux for the inexperienced home user, only it's not just kernels either. What about installing new applications? users are used to downloading a setup.exe and running it. With some distros you use a package management tool, others you compile the source code. This will be intollerable for many users, anyway this is deviating from the topic.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • > Just as easy as downloading and running setup.exe, wouldn't you say?

          Non-geeks most certainly wouldn't.

          When yer mum calls you regarding her shpanky new FreeBSD box and the fact that "some book... or library.. that's it.." needs upgrading are you going to tell her to fire up an xterm, cd into /ports/ and make all install clean. Then claim that's just as easy as double-clicking on a "setup" icon?

          You've never done tech support right?

          Cheers
          Stor

    • Re:Linux's new target market (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Alex ( 342 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:42PM (#5473895)
      Go on.... Why "should" people upgrade their kernel? What are "the benefits of upgrading"? (to the average K-Mart buying linux user),

      Alex

      • Maybe that new USB digital camera they bought is not supported by Linux 2.2? Improved hardware support is the only tangible reason (to a Joe Kmart user).

      • Re:Linux's new target market (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Blkdeath ( 530393 ) on Monday March 10, 2003 @12:57AM (#5474698) Homepage
        Go on.... Why "should" people upgrade their kernel? What are "the benefits of upgrading"? (to the average K-Mart buying linux user),

        "People" should upgrade their installed software as their distribution vendor tests and certifies it as stable and secure (to the best of their knowledge) and released it to the "stable" branch. Else, they should upgrade as new functionality, drivers, driver bases, etc. is desired (GigE, ACPI/APM enhancements, etc.)

        People who run Linux as a hobby "should" upgrade as they feel neccesary, but they'll probably have atleast one workstation on the bleeding edge anyways, so they're a moot point.

        People who run servers, casually or professionally, "should" track updates and understand their impact on the remainder of their systems. Their professional, corporate, mission-critical, or otherwise important (generally in the context of "to paying customers", "management" or "other employees") "should" be updated on a semi-regular basis as neccesitated by (potentual/actual) stability or security issues, and after a sufficient testbed period and impact analysis.

        In general, an upgrade as major as a kernel (major revision) should be taken with all due consideration. Mostly I'd reccomend a distribution version upgrade (ie; an all-encompassing upgrade procedure that will account for the C library and compiler, all system libraries, shells, and related utilities, as well as the userland).

        If an "average K-Mart buying linux user"{sic} wishes to keep their computer's performance and features up to par with what's currently available, they should keep their packages, including their kernel, up to date. With modern GUI-based upgrade procedures as simple as scan, select, apply, ignore, the kernel is just another package, and pre-compiled binary kernels will often come with all the requisite modules and configure itself to become bootable. Minimal input is required by the user, except for perhaps "This upgrade didn't work, I'll boot the previous option and revert."

        I know that my workstations are noticeably more responsive since upgrading to 2.4, and I make extensive use of much of the added/enhanced functionality. However, if what you're running works for you, does the job, is stable and secure, and still being maintained (which kernels as far back as 2.0.x still are), there's no definite reason to upgrade. If it ain't broke, and all that. That's the very same reason I still service a lot of Windows'98(SE) customers, and the very reason I'll often reccomend that they stick right where they are. To Linux, FreeBSD, etc. users I'll offer the same advise. Anyone doing otherwise is offering a disservice.

    • Re:Linux's new target market (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Osty ( 16825 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:43PM (#5473900)

      more likely, are not educated on the benefits of upgrading.

      And those benefits would be ...? I was on the kernel upgrade treadmill for years, getting new versions as they were released, upgrading to 2.2 with the very first version, etc. It gained me very little. I reached a point where staying on top of kernel upgrades was more pain than it was worth, and stopped. Now I only upgrade if I need some new feature, better support for an existing feature, or for security reasons. Aside from security patches (which I would hope all of the "Windows Update"-ish tools would handle for these users already), 99.95% of all Linux users have no reason to upgrade their kernel, so long as they're using a sufficiently modern one to begin with. Why, then, is it such a bad thing that these users don't know how to upgrade their kernel? If anything, I'd say it's a testament to Linux that users running it can get by without ever having to touch the kernel (aside from maybe loading a module or two when they get new hardware, though even that could/should be automated).

      • I've felt the way you do for a long time. I've usually got the latest dev kernel on my laptop because of its requirement of a recent ACPI patch (it's one of those legacy-free Toshibas) to get sound and its NVIDIA video card (these two don't go together well), but for every other system I have I don't touch the kernel if I can get away with it.

        In this day and age, when most common PC hardware, and certainly any PC hardware worth anything (ie. not the aforementioned laptop), is well-supported under Linux, why do people feel compelled to have the latest kernel? I compile all my kernels on my Athlon XP build machine and even when the compiles are pretty fast (compared to my old 486 box that I first used Linux on) it's not exactly *fun*.

        I consider myself a pretty big geek, being thoroughly integrated into the Slashdot hive mind and all. I'm on top of CVS gaim, xine/totem, Mozilla, and GNOME (hoping it won't suck eventually) because they seem to become noticeably better by the day. But the kernel? Could someone please explain why?

        • Re:Linux's new target market (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Osty ( 16825 ) on Monday March 10, 2003 @02:24AM (#5474926)

          I consider myself a pretty big geek, being thoroughly integrated into the Slashdot hive mind and all. I'm on top of CVS gaim, xine/totem, Mozilla, and GNOME (hoping it won't suck eventually) because they seem to become noticeably better by the day. But the kernel? Could someone please explain why?

          Like I said, I was on that kernel upgrade treadmill, and I think it's a bit of an addiction. You want the bragging rights to say that you're running whatever the latest and greatest version of the kernel happens to be. For most people, it's about showing off and making themselves feel superior because they're running the latest stuff. I think it goes the same for the rest of the stuff you mentioned as well. Once those projects get to the "good enough" point, what do you gain by using the CVS nightly drop vs. a released version? Why not Mozilla 1.1 (or whatever Mozilla is at now) rather than CVS? I used to do the same thing with Microsoft stuff. I ran various betas of Internet Explorer (IE4, IE5, IE6), and even had various RC releases (all legally acquired) of XP and Win2K (even back before Win2K was Win2K). Now, though, I'd rather get my work done instead of futzing with my system.

    • Re:Linux's new target market (Score:5, Informative)

      by Otter ( 3800 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:45PM (#5473911) Journal
      Not that there are vast numbers of Linux-using grandmothers in reality, anyway, but I'd propose that the overwhelming majority of desktop users, and probably a lot of server admins should be cautious in upgrading.

      Distributions provide well-tested, patched kernels. Compulsively updating kernels is a fine hobby if it makes you happy, but unless there's a new feature you need, the potential for breaking something exceeds any practical benefit. The experience of the 2.4 series, where half the kernels substantially degraded performance because of some new half-assed VM only underscores that lesson.

      No, if you don't know why you need to upgrade your kernel, you almost certainly don't.

    • If there aren't security patches in the kernel, why upgrade a stable server?

      If I've got redhat 6.2 servers with security patches installed that are running 24/7 with no hiccups, what's the point of upgrading?
    • So do you know what's involved in upgrading your kernel?

      This isn't a minor change, major kernel updates usually require updated tools. Hopefully the tools will update cleanly, but it's a non-trivial risk.

      The same thing applies to upgrading distro versions. I'm hardly a naive user, yet I have been unsuccessful in every attempt to upgrade my Debian potato systems to woody. I've now given up - I just do a clean install of woody.

  • Changelog (Score:5, Informative)

    by SexyTr0llGal ( 650651 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:25PM (#5473815)
    Found the changelog here [tonnikala.net]. It reads:

    Linux 2.2.24-rc5

    * Fix n_hdlc globals pollution (Paul Fulghum)
    * Fix initialisation of sk->sleep (Holger Smolinksi)
    * Handle init_ethdev returning null in tulip (Neale Banks)
    * Backport rtc wildcard fix to 2.2 (Paul Gortmaker)
    * Correct wireless config help (Neale Banks)
    * Fix smc9194 build (me)

    • Re:Changelog (Score:3, Informative)

      by Kourino ( 206616 )
      Remember, that's just the changelog from -rc4 to -rc5. There's more changes between .23 and .24, unfortunately Alan doesn't seem to keep as accurate changelogs in 2.2.

  • why 2.2? simple answer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by StandardDeviant ( 122674 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:26PM (#5473820) Homepage Journal
    If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

    There's some nice things in 2.4, certainly (e.g. USB support that works). My home machines and laptop run it. But many of the servers I admin have been humming along fine with the 2.2 tree for quite some time, so I see very little reason to upgrade (indeed, with the hairiness in the 2.4 tree's virtual memory handling, I can several reasons NOT to upgrade beyond just change management). (Some will say that you should upgrade to 2.4 for the new firewalling features, but I prefer to put firewalling onto a dedicated openbsd machine or an appliance like a netscreen so the issue is moot for me.)

    • Re:why 2.2? simple answer (Score:5, Insightful)

      by GRH ( 16141 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @10:06PM (#5474000)
      If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

      No kiddin. My headless P100 MP3 player/server has been 2.2.19 since that kernel was released and it's never gone down (except for having to move the machine a few times).

      It's behind my 2.4.20 firewall, so I'm not too concerned about security updates or patches on the old box.

      So, in the end, a 2.4 upgrade would provide nothing, and waste a day of my time. There's your reason.

  • I'm running ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by B3ryllium ( 571199 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:26PM (#5473822) Homepage
    kernel 1.0.1

    It kind of itches a little.
  • I'm still on 2.2. Waiting for OpenWall to go to 2.4 stable for the kernel as I use OpenWall and LIDS in my kernel compile.

  • My main reason for keeping 2.2 around... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by samrolken ( 246301 ) <samrolken AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:39PM (#5473885)
    I don't really have a choice. It's well-known that the 2.4 kernels can't compile properly for the 32-bit sparc architecture. http://www.rocklinux.org/mailing-list/rock-ports/2 001-7/5.html -- Sam Kennedy

  • Need 2.2 for microsecond packet timing. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Chmarr ( 18662 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:43PM (#5473899)
    I've written a little application around libpcap that needs the microsecond resolution for packet arrival times. 2.2 has that. 2.4 only gives me 10 millisecond resolution.

    • Re:Need 2.2 for microsecond packet timing. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Effugas ( 2378 ) on Monday March 10, 2003 @12:48AM (#5474674) Homepage
      Chmarr--

      Try this:

      int immediate = 1; ...
      ioctl(pcap_fileno(pcap), BIOCIMMEDIATE, &immediate);

      Does screw with some nonblocking modes, though.

      Another quick tip: __attribute__ ((packed)); after your structure declarations will make structs vastly nicer to apply against raw packets in a cross platform manner.

      Whatcha trying to write?

      Yours Truly,

      Dan Kaminsky
      DoxPara Research
      http://www.doxpara.com

  • Is this the long awaited (Score:3, Funny)

    by infonography ( 566403 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:46PM (#5473913) Homepage
    Sanders Kernel? I always know to trust the Kernel.

  • Linux 2.2.x? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JWSmythe ( 446288 ) <jwsmythe@nospam.jwsmythe.com> on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:48PM (#5473921) Homepage Journal

    People still use 2.2.x?

    Just kidding. :)

    As I recall, I had some old old Slackware machines . I don't even remember the version number, but I think they started out with a 2.0.x kernel. On most of our machines, I didn't really want to take them down til they died of old age or whatever (usually we wanted faster machines over time), but kept upgrading the kernels on some occasionally for new features.. As I recall, we just couldn't get the 2.4.x kernels to even compile on them, without library upgrades, which I wasn't prepared to do (and probably mess up) on a whole bunch of machines. :)

    But, I'm sure there are plenty of people out there with 2.2.x still, who haven't had a need to upgrade. I was just working on a machine a few days ago, that is, and there's no need to upgrade, it works fine.

    > uname -a
    Linux foo.bar.com 2.2.13 #3 Sun Nov 21 18:45:36 EST 1999 i586 unknown

    That machine is still running strong. We just upgraded the CPU, motherboard, and memory, but it was all compatable with the drivers that were compiled in back in 1999.. :) The CPU went up from an AMD 300Mhz to AMD 450Mhz.. hehe. Free upgrades are the best, right?

  • 2.2 kernel... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dennism ( 13667 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:49PM (#5473929) Homepage
    I've got a Redhat 6.2 machine running 2.2.21... and I doubt if I'll even update it to .24. The only reason it was upgraded to .21 was because I swapped out the 10mbit network card for a 100mbit.

    It's been running fine pretty much non-stop for 4 years now. The only time it ever is rebooted is when the power goes out (yeah, I know...)

    It's rock solid, and serves as my apache and SSH server to the outside and my FTP, MySQL, NFS, Telnet and AppleTalk server to the inside. To top it off, it's running SETI@Home and it's on a P120 with 32 megs of RAM, with no swap space being used. Not too bad, in my opinion.

    Unless I suddenly get a big outgoing bandwidth upgrade, and an increase in activity to go along with it, I don't think I'll ever be upgrading this machine :D

  • torn (Score:4, Funny)

    by awing0 ( 545366 ) <adam AT badtech DOT org> on Sunday March 09, 2003 @09:53PM (#5473943) Homepage
    I don't know, I'm always torn between losing my uptime and installing the latest kernel. Its a lose/lose situation. If slashdot wouldn't announce the new 2.2 kernel I could just go on believing I had the latest code and it wouldn't bother me. But now that I know there's a new kernel, I'll have to compile it and bear the pain of losing my (not much, but around 130 days now) uptime. Thanks again for dragging me out of my sheltered update life.
  • what you get when you choose a security through obscrurity strategy within an open source deployment. how many script kiddies know MIPS assembler? my little cobalt raq2 is a lovely server running a 2.0 kernel :)

    ok, there are some limitations, but, on the whole, i get great performance out of the little beast.

  • Embedded devices (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09, 2003 @10:05PM (#5473993)
    There seems to be an assumption that we are only talking about workstations/servers when it comes to if the 2.0 or 2.2 kernel is still in use. The reality is that the Linux kernel is in use on embedded devices and it is not always desirable to try to be bleeding edge with such devices. Once you get a 2.0 or 2.2 kernel to fit withen the design limitations of an embedded device, upgrading may mean rethinking the hardware and starting from scratch. For example, I would be willing to bet that the majority of Agenda Computing/VR3 [agendawiki.com] devices will never be upgraded to version 2.4 of the kernel.
  • Can anyone comment on if and how the SCO lawsuit may or may not effect linux kernel distros now or in the future?

    I wouldn't throw away the earlier kernels just yet. It may not effect your average mom and pop operation, but a legal injunction would curtail alot of corporate projects that are currently using linux.

    It would be nice to see someone respond who is very familiar with the kernel development and these issues.

  • On the flip side of the coin.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by XaXXon ( 202882 ) <xaxxon.gmail@com> on Sunday March 09, 2003 @10:13PM (#5474028) Homepage
    I just upgraded to 2.5.64 with Linus's patch ( mentioned yesterday [slashdot.org]) merged in.

    I am running Gentoo [gentoo.org] and I first installed the gentoo-optimized 2.4.20 kernel. When I read the article yesterday I decided to make the jump to 2.5.64 + patch. Holy wow, Batman.

    I'm running Gentoo under VMware [vmware.com] on a dual 2.2 GHz Xeon (only 1 processor makes it through to the virtual machine, though). After figuring out that I needed new modutils, I had everything up and running. I started up a kernel compile with make -j 2 to really try and saturate the system, and moved the mouse around. The mouse was silky smooth, KDE quickly and properly recognized mouse-overs and everything was just so nice. I then booted back to 2.4.20 and ran the same test. Oh the pain! The mouse was chunky, KDE didn't even try and do mouseover animations.. it was horrible. I've switched grub to default to the 2.5 kernel and I'm not going back.

    That said, this is a play machine and does nothing important. So if it crashes more often (no crashes yet), then it doesn't really bother me..

  • iBCS is one reason (Score:5, Informative)

    by troutman ( 26963 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @10:17PM (#5474041) Homepage
    The iBCS module (not offically in the kernel, but put in by RedHat and some other distributions) actually works well in 2.2. There are people out there who still need binary SCO compatibility (yes, SCO is *evil*, especially now) due to binary-only programs that they cannot modify.

    The 2.4 version of iBCS (ABI) doesn't always work. Everytime I have looked at it, it is still broken for the apps that a client needs it for. So we have stuck with 2.2.x.

    And 2.2.x is pretty rock solid, on all of the server configurations I am supporting these days. I have multiple servers with more than a year's worth of uptime, two with uptime counters that have 'wrapped around' and now working on two years of solid uptime.

  • We have a P133 at work routing and doing NAT, er, excuse, me, masquerading, for a wireless (old-school breezecom 802.11 FHSS) link to another building in town. It's running 2.0.38 and has been chugging away for years now without needing any attention.

    kernel 2.0 rocks!!11!!

  • both alive and seriously kicking.

    For the server, I will have to keep this kernel because the onboard Ethernet port is supported through a patched driver - and the patch I found doesn't apply to any version of the kernel module I checked, so I have to use the compiled module that came with the patch. No, I don't have any info on the origin of the module.
  • Debian still recommends the old 2.2 kernel and you can still install it from their latest distro. It wasn't untill alot of arm twisting before debian even decided to use 2.4 in their latest distro. There are alot of bugs withstanding from 2.4 and 2.2 has matured and all the bugs have been wrinkled out.

    The VM bug in Linux doesn't help things either. The new patch in the recent kernels that fixed the problems is not %100 stable either under heavy i/o loads from what I heard.

    If I had to use a server I would pick FreeBSD or debian with kernel 2.2 for these reasons.

    Does anyone else use the old kernel for these reasons.

  • kernel 2.0 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mog ( 22706 ) <alexmchale@@@gmail...com> on Sunday March 09, 2003 @11:45PM (#5474438)
    I recently deployed a new dial-up server at my work using Slink Debian, kernel 2.0.38. The machine is a 100Mhz 486 with 8MB of RAM. It's deliriously stable, and runs all the software we need on it (mgetty, atftpd, cron, and some sh scripts). Why would I go for a kernel that requires more memory (Debian 2.2+ wouldn't boot in 8MB of RAM), when the tried and true works great?

  • 2.0.36 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by michael_cain ( 66650 ) on Monday March 10, 2003 @12:03AM (#5474513) Journal
    Much as I hate to admit it, the household server is still running 2.0.36. IP masquerade and firewall for the household LAN's Internet access via cable modem, Samba print service for the other machines, backup storage for kids' schoolwork, and an antique version of Apache whose main function is to provide access to the Perl scripts that allow multiple people to share an old SCSI scanner. Haven't had a monitor connected to it for years, and the BIOS is old enough that you can tell it to ignore the fact that the keyboard check fails at boot time. The old AT power supply comes back up without any manual action after a power failure -- no idea how many of those it's been through, but the ext2 file system doesn't seem to have ever lost anything.

  • 2.2 forever.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by PeekabooCaribou ( 544905 ) <slashdot@bwerp.net> on Monday March 10, 2003 @12:46AM (#5474665) Homepage Journal
    cd /usr/src/linux
    perl -i -e 's/^PATCHLEVEL = 4$/PATCHLEVEL = 2/' Makefile

    All the benefits of 2.4, with the beautiful, symmetric numbering of 2.2.

  • Why do we make such a big thing out of upgrading? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dthoma ( 593797 ) on Monday March 10, 2003 @03:32AM (#5475152) Journal
    When kernel 2.6 comes out, no doubt we'll all cootchy-coo over it and quite a number of us will run to download it simply because it has a lot of improvements and because it's the most functional kernel. And yet in four, five or six years' time those same people would probably recoil in horror if they found out that someone is "still" using 2.6 because "everyone knows" that some newer kernel is "so much better".

    If something works now, why won't it work in a few years time with the same hardware? If stability is important to you, isn't it better to stick to something tried and tested?

  • Don't upgrade to 2.4! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Monday March 10, 2003 @03:35AM (#5475158) Homepage Journal
    Don't upgrade to 2.4! If you do, then Linux will never beat FreeBSD in the uptime [netcraft.com] department!

  • Bridging firewalls! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Krellan ( 107440 ) <krellan@NOspAm.krellan.com> on Monday March 10, 2003 @04:38AM (#5475303) Homepage Journal
    I run a 2.2 kernel, with the patch for Ethernet bridging and firewalling.

    http://bridge.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]


    http://www.math.leidenuniv.nl/mailman/listinfo/bri dge [leidenuniv.nl]


    It seems that the new firewalling technique of 2.4 (iptables) does not play well with Ethernet bridges.

    I have a DSL connection to a small subnet of static IP addresses (/29). The problem is that the DSL uplink, out of my control and unfirewalled, is on one of the addresses in my subnet! It's as if there is a fox in the henhouse.

    There is no proper routing subnet, as there should be. This is no doubt because of the IP address shortage. The DSL uplink must exist on the same subnet as my machines, giving me only 5 usable addresses for my machines. Broadcasts must be passed correctly, or the machines won't be able to ARP each other. Proxy ARP is not an option, because of the need to keep the DSL uplink on the same subnet.

    So, I run Ethernet bridging with firewalling. I bridge two Ethernet cards together, passing broadcast packets between them (filtering out externally generated "smurf" broadcast packets, of course). I also implement my firewall at this point. The network is one logical LAN, but partitioned into two physical LAN's, with the firewall machine in between them. The firewall makes sure that unwanted packets from the DSL uplink never reach my machines.

    It's not perfect (there is no stateful connection filtering), but it has worked well for me. Probes come in at least every hour, and no successful breakins to my knowledge.

    And another reason not to upgrade? The machine's uptime is now at 326 days, I'm going for the year :)

  • Old VMWare license (Score:3, Insightful)

    by karlm ( 158591 ) on Monday March 10, 2003 @04:57AM (#5475347) Homepage
    I dual boot 2.2 and 2.4 kernels. My Fuji FinePix digital camera and IBM USB keyboard appear to not interface with kernels in the 2.2 series. (I'm the only person I know to run dual keyboards.) However, I bought a VMWare 2.x license and don't want to shell out $300 for the latest VMWare version until there's a version that supports the Linux 2.6 kernels. I've so far resisted the temptation to grab a VMWare keygen or cracked version.

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