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Last 2.5.x Linux Kernel Released 400

Posted by CowboyNeal from the beginning-of-the-end dept.
Kourino writes "Today on LKML, Linus released 2.5.75, which he said will be "the last 2.5.x kernel from me", and that he and Andrew Morton are going to start a 2.6-pre series soon. While this certainly does mean things could get interesting soon, don't hold your breath about seeing the actual 2.6 for a while; there are still many areas that need work. This essentially means that the development branch is going into maintenance mode, and new features probably won't get in after this point. Changes of note in 2.5.75 include a merge of the anticipatory scheduler from Andrew Morton's -mm tree and updates from several architectures."
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Last 2.5.x Linux Kernel Released More

Last 2.5.x Linux Kernel Released

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  • Argh (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:29PM (#6412248)
    What about Reiser4?

  • Easiest way to fix the bugs (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sabalon ( 1684 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:30PM (#6412250)
    Just name it 2.6 - everyone will flock to it because 2.even means that it must be a stable release, never mind it's the first release.

    Bitching will ensue, and the bugs will get fixed even quicker. Why mess around with all the pre-2.6 stuff, when this is obviously the fastest way to get it all working :)

    • Re:Easiest way to fix the bugs (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Muggins the Mad ( 27719 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:43PM (#6412326)
      >Just name it 2.6 - everyone will flock to it because 2.even means that it must be a stable release, never mind it's the first release.

      And those who made that mistake with 2.4.0 will continue to ignore 2.6 until it's proven itself stable and not find the bugs anyway.

      (I'm not one of them, but I have time to spend
      on following dev releases. Not everybody does).

      I'm not a fan of the "it compiles, ship it! and we'll fix it in a service pack" mentality.

      - Muggins the Mad

      • Re:Easiest way to fix the bugs (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Bill, Shooter of Bul ( 629286 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @11:56PM (#6412645) Journal
        I'm not a fan of the "it compiles, ship it! and we'll fix it in a service pack" mentality.
        And I'm not a fan of waiting for beta testing that will never happen before releasing it. It is a thousand times easier to find bugs that have been found. Therefore the method that allows you to find the most bugs in the shortest amount of time is the best method. This is assuming that you are not actually selling the product for a profit. In other words, release the 2.6 kernel because no one important is going to use it until it gets put into a distribution. So there's sort of always a testing period after the release but before most people start using it.
        ok, I've managed to completly disagree with myself several times. I guess that means I must be right. Its pretty clear to me that there *isn't* a best solution. So for heaven's sake just do something, it will be better than nothing.
    • don't worry mandrake will, they have an annoying habit of taking beta versions of linux software such has xfree 4.2.9 and calling it 4.3, they do it with the kernel too the'll take a pre version of 2.4.x add more drivers and and put them in the distro makes it a pain in the ass to install drivers that require the unaltered src

  • So (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:30PM (#6412251)
    Will the 2.6 "stable" kernel series actually be stable?

    The 2.4 series had this public cloud of wierd problems hanging over it its entire existence. It seems like 2.4 never really seemed "trustworthy", they kept making huge and highly experimental changes and 2.4 seemed just kind of like a work in progress for its entire run. Will 2.6.0 be totally safe to download and run and install in a production environment, or is that going to be kind of a "well thats still sort of experimental be careful"? And if the latter, why the heck aren't they staying in 2.5 until it's ready for production.

    Am I just too paranoid, or do you know what i mean?

    -- anonymous and terrified

    • Re:So (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:44PM (#6412332)
      The main problems with 2.4 were the VM problems, especially on big boxes. Now with massive amounts of testing and resources especially from IBM, they are very much improved. There hasn't been a mention of a VM problem for quite a while.

      2.6.0 I think will be a lot more stable than 2.4.0, but I don't think its for a critical environment. Its more to start getting testers on board. The number of people using 2.6 probably increases exponentially with each point release for the first few, so leave the more critical stuff for a while. Do you really need it?

    • Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)

      by aussersterne ( 212916 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:49PM (#6412354) Homepage
      All stable kernel series take a while to sort themselves out. Stable series doesn't mean bug-free, it means working toward such as a matter of priority instead of actively adding new bells, whistles and capabilities. Don't install and run 2.6.0 (or 2.4.0 for that matter), give it some time to stabilize. No kernel since 1.2.x has been particularly stable early on.

      As for the eventual stability of 2.4.x, I have an SMP file/print/Web/DHCP/DNS server running in one of the labs that I volunteer to run that has been running 2.4.18 since it was released sometime in late February 2002... it has only had one reboot, to replace a UPS whose battery went dead. It runs 24/7 and has crashed/frozen exactly zero times. Average load is generally above 2-3 during open hours.

      That's not bad for a "work in progress" kernel!

      • Re:So (Score:2, Interesting)

        by 73939133 ( 676561 )
        All stable kernel series take a while to sort themselves out. Stable series doesn't mean bug-free, it means working toward such

        I dunno--I think 2.4 has actually deteriorated throughout its lifetime. For example, for my hardware, 2.4.20 seems to have serious bugs in USB2, while 2.4.19 is working fine. Also, I have encountered numerous compilation problems in different 2.4 kernels with different configuration settings.

        It runs 24/7 and has crashed/frozen exactly zero times.

        Yes, in my experience, there h

        • Re:So (Score:2, Informative)

          by Your_Mom ( 94238 )
          if you manage to find one that configures correctly, compiles without complaints, and boots up, chances are that it will work well. But if my experience is any guide, that's a big "if"

          Wow, seriously, what /are/ you doing to your kernel? I have yet to see any kernel not configure correctly, very rarely seen a compile blow up (and 90% of the time that happened it was user error ['make depend'? We don't need no 'make depend'!]) And most of the time it fails to boot is because I don't have the right support c

          • Re:So (Score:4, Informative)

            by umm qasr ( 72190 ) <leith@[ ]edu ['bu.' in gap]> on Thursday July 10, 2003 @11:56PM (#6412646) Homepage
            90% of the time that happened it was user error ['make depend'? We don't need no 'make depend'!])

            You don't actually need a make dep with the 2.5 kernels. So, we dont actually need no make depend!

          • I don't know about the grandparent poster was doing, but I have run into similar things from time to time. Like 2.4.20 -> 2.4.21 as follows:

            make mrproper
            make oldconfig... (I like to do my patching after I've got a kernel that works)
            make dep clean bzImage modules modules_install

            I don't think there's anything abstruse about that, but 2.4.20 works fine, while 2.4.21 panicked on boot-up (unable to mount root fs). Haven't had time to go back and work out why this happened, but it really shouldn't.

        • Yes, in my experience, there hasn't been much flakiness in those kernels--if you manage to find one that configures correctly, compiles without complaints, and boots up, chances are that it will work well. But if my experience is any guide, that's a big "if".
          I tried useing kde' nice front-end for config and had simillar experiences. Since I switched back to xconfig, I have had 0 problems.

        • Yes, in my experience, there hasn't been much flakiness in those kernels--if you manage to find one that configures correctly, compiles without complaints, and boots up, chances are that it will work well. But if my experience is any guide, that's a big "if".

          I know. I'we had the some compile problems also.. The solution is to save your configuration to a file (F.ex. Config-2.4), do a "make mrproper", and then compile the kernel with your saved configuration..("make dep && make clean &&

    • Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)

      by N7DR ( 536428 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:59PM (#6412412) Homepage
      Will 2.6.0 be totally safe to download and run and install in a production environment, or is that going to be kind of a "well thats still sort of experimental be careful"? And if the latter, why the heck aren't they staying in 2.5 until it's ready for production.

      It seems to me that the problem is that the number of people who try to use 2.6.0 will be far greater than the number that try 2.5.x. Therefore, the probability that a whole new set of bugs will appear (probably not major ones, but a fair number of minor ones) is quite high, and there's nothing that the kernel developers can really do to prevent this happening. This is even more true than int the past because of the ever-increasing ratio of Linux users to Linux kernel developers.

      • This is even more true than int the past because of the ever-increasing ratio of Linux users to Linux kernel developers.
        Yeah, but there is also a more systematic approach to testing being done at IBM and OSDL( I would guess this includes some fence sitters suh as HP). The amount of on-going generalized testing is much improved over what 1-2 years ago was. In fact, I suspect that this kernel will be the most stabile release that we have had for some time.

    • Re:So (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Mr Bill ( 21249 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @11:00PM (#6412420)
      I started running the 2.4.0 pre release kernels on my desktop as soon as they were available and never had a problem.

      I started running the 2.4 kernel on some production boxes around 2.4.6 and never had a problem.

      Yes there will be some problems with the code, but unless you use every single feature in the kernel, chances are it will not bite you... I can't remember the last time I had a kernel panic (besides me mis-compiling modules) on a running box. Probably not since the 2.0 days for me.
    • I'm happy with the stability of my machine, but what I want to know as an experienced end user is what can I expect from the 2.6 series. How about someone knowlegable listing the top 10 gains over the 2.4 kernel?

      • Re:Top 10 New features over 2.4 ....are what? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by crimsun ( 4771 ) <crimsun@ubuntu. c o m> on Thursday July 10, 2003 @11:17PM (#6412516) Homepage
        Here's a good pointer: Dave's "post-Halloween" [codemonkey.org.uk] doc.

      • Re:Top 10 New features over 2.4 ....are what? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Kourino ( 206616 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @11:30PM (#6412563) Homepage
        Well, some of the nice things are:

        o New i/o scheduler, which seems to improve a lot of people's desktop performance;
        o Better scheduler performance under loads with lots of processes;
        o Rewritten scheduling and threading code, which, coupled with Ulich Drepper's NTPL library, greatly improves threading performance;
        o ALSA for sound, and AGP 3 support;
        o Faster and cleaner framebuffer support;
        o Faster CD recording that doesn't need ide-scsi;
        o Upgrades for NFS (v4), NTFS, and HFS+, as well as merges of JFS and XFS;
        o System-level in-kernel profiling support;
        o CPU Frequence scaling
        o IPSec

        More information can be found in Dave Jones' list of things to expect in 2.6 [codemonkey.org.uk]. Personally, I think it's great to see features that benefit both big and small systems.

        • Re:Top 10 New features over 2.4 ....are what? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by fanatic ( 86657 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @11:56PM (#6412647)

          o Faster CD recording that doesn't need ide-scsi;

          It's about goddamn motherfucking time. God the IDE CD running SCSI emulation is the biggest piece of shit I've seen on Linux. I have a box that has run rh 7.2 and now runs rh 9 and the only thing that locks this box up is anything out of the ordinary having to do with the CD-r (such as the pathetic piece of SHIT that GNOME calls CD player software - who made this crap the default desktop in RH? [And yes, I know I can run KDE (in fact I use the CD player kscd from that environment) but having heard how RH mucked around with KDE to 'unify' it with gnome, I'm leery of that]). Last night, that junk locked my machine so solid I couldn't login over the network, the Xserver froze (except for the mouse) and I had to hardware-reset it, fsck all the filesystems on reboot [even though I'm using ext3] and then it spent all fucking night resyncing the raid mirrors.

          I love Linux, I've been a fantic about it since 1999, but that ide-scsi was terrible fucking hack.

          • oops. Guess I got carried away. I just hate it when Linux acts like Winblows.

          • Re:Top 10 New features over 2.4 ....are what? (Score:4, Interesting)

            by hughk ( 248126 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @01:54AM (#6412990) Journal
            I use RH, but I stop using it at the ide-SCSI level. I use a locally compiled MPlayer CDRtools at the latest release level and XCDroast. Its a bit more fiddly to configure, but it works well on my older machines. I also have it on a true SCSI machine and again it works ok.

          • Re:Top 10 New features over 2.4 ....are what? (Score:2, Funny)

            by Anonymous Coward
            Wow, they don't call you fanatic for nothing!

            Well, I've never had any problems with ide-scsi. And I'm not paranoid about Red Hat's KDE patches doing -- whatever the hell you think it will do. Eat your children, maybe? Steal my refrigerator? Yeah. I mean. Calm down?

            I steer clear of that whole GNOME/KDE thing. I do most everything from an xterm. CD burning software? cdrecord. CD playing software? cdplay. I use FVWM as my window manager and I don't run any gnome bits, other than the occasional ap
          • yes, I know I can run KDE (in fact I use the CD player kscd from that environment) but having heard how RH mucked around with KDE to 'unify' it with gnome, I'm leery of that

            Have no fear:

            xinit /usr/bin/kde3

            (you know what to do if you have kde2)

            Or if you want to run both at the same time, go to a text console and:

            xinit /user/bin/kde3 -- :1

            I feel your pain re Gnome. At least the desktop itself and panel don't seem to crash any more. It's getting more useable too, but you need time lapse photog

    • Re:So (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ADOT Troll ( 687975 )
      It will be the processor optimisations that will determine the success of 2.6 Linux. The solutions that Microsoft has embrased with hyperthreading might be a non-starter for Linux. The Intel/MS world view is to optimise compilation for Windows and software emu the 32 bit environment, a difficult if not stupid way to do things.

      If the Amd world view of how to achieve 32 bit without emu on a 64 bit platform are to fly then the adoption of AMD by the server world is essential for Linux in the future. Blindly f
    • It seems like 2.4 never really seemed "trustworthy", they kept making huge and highly experimental changes and 2.4 seemed just kind of like a work in progress for its entire run.

      For many uses 2.4 was fine from the beginning... The 2.4 VM issues didn't really get sorted out until 2.4.14. After that it was pretty good.

      There are still tons of minor glitches with 2.5, but nothing huge like the 2.4 VM. The big problems with 2.5 are the IDE layer and the TTY code.

    • Will 2.6.0 be totally safe to download and run and install in a production environment

      To quantity of such kernerls is equal to the quantity of unsinkable ships.

      totally safe does not exist! And who ever sells you such is unserious.
    • If history repeats itself, my experience with 2.3/2.4 was that even late 2.3 kernels were buggy, and definitely not stable. 2.4.1, on the other hand, did me just fine, running perfectly stable on UP and SMP machines for long enough that I had no reason to upgrade until the o(1) scheduler was released.

      steve

  • I'm glad they put in (Score:5, Funny)

    by toddhunter ( 659837 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:30PM (#6412253)
    the anticipatory scheduler, because I haven't been expecting them to do that yet.

  • Don't you hate it when people say.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Goalie_Ca ( 584234 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:31PM (#6412256)
    "Linux 2.5.x? Pssh. That's old! I run linux 9.0!"

  • What about C2 -style auditing? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by StupidKatz ( 467476 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:33PM (#6412266)
    The SNARE [intersectalliance.com] folks say they are working to get C2-style auditing capability in the kernel, since the old hooks were broken/fixed in 2.4.21. This is a big feature that is keeping Linux from being a "serious" player in "secure" environments, such as certain government-controlled areas.

  • New features probably wont get in?? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Curtman ( 556920 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:34PM (#6412272)
    So why would they set the feature freeze for Halloween [linux-mag.com] if new features wont be allowed in after mid July?? Or does the feature freeze have nothing to do with features being added? I'm highly confused.

    • Re:New features probably wont get in?? (Score:5, Informative)

      by phantomlord ( 38815 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:51PM (#6412372) Journal
      No more large changes are going to take place... just bug fixes, driver updates, etc. Today Linus said he would reject the HUGE (40k+ lines) ARM merge excepting stuff that only touched the ARM specific source (ie, arch/arm) even though ARM doesn't currently compile. The only thing he says must be working out of the box for 2.6.0 final is x86 and he doesn't care if other architectures are broken on release if fixing them destabilizes what's already there.

    • Re:New features probably wont get in?? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @11:52PM (#6412637) Homepage
      The Feature Freeze did indeed occur in 2002. This is something different, I think referred to as the Code Freeze.

      AFAIUI, no major features have been accepted since the Feature Freeze, and from now on, nothing that will majorly alter the code will be accepted. Only bugfixes.

  • The 2.5.x series could be real cool (Score:3, Informative)

    by MoThugz ( 560556 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:35PM (#6412275) Homepage
    ...if released in the near future as stable. I did play around with the 2.5.69 build and I must say it's somehow feels faster.

    However, the new module handling procedures in the 2.5.x series makes some of my frequently used apps to behave strangely (iptables for example)... even with module-init-tools.

    Ah well... as long as there's progress :)

  • maintenance mode (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:35PM (#6412276)
    Maintenance mode? No, 2.2 is in maintenance mode.
    2.4 isn't even in "maintenance" mode yet - it is _the_ stable tree, and its getting new things added to it with each release (slowly, and after being tested in other trees, and RCs). Just recently new ACPI for example.

    2.5 is going into "stabalisation" mode, to get it ready enough for 2.6.0 that it won't piss too many people off who try it. 2.5 has been a good cycle and 2.6.0 will be quite stable, but it needs to go through a few 2.6 point releases during which more and more people will start testing it.

    Then _2.4_ will go into "maintenance" mode.

  • A couple notes on hardware (Score:5, Informative)

    by phantomlord ( 38815 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:38PM (#6412289) Journal
    Some notes from my personal experiences with 2.5 on certain hardware:

    Those of you who want to use the closed NVidia drivers with 2.5 can find the necessary patches here [minion.de]

    2.5.71 also introduced a new native mode driver for synaptics touchpads. You'll need to download the X11 driver [telia.com] and I saw it mentioned that the cvs version of GPM has support if you use that as well.

    • I wish I could find a synaptics driver for my serial touchpad.
      I have one of those ergonomic weird looking keyboard with a ysnaptics tp built in and I can not turn off the stupid tap to click crap.

      I freaking hate it.

  • Dependencies? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Duncan3 ( 10537 )
    Sounds like it's about time to try out 2.5.

    Is there a "the mile long list of things to update before trying to boot 2.5.x" list?

    I remember the "fun" of updating 2.2...

    • Re:Dependencies? (Score:3, Informative)

      by uhmmmm ( 512629 )
      the main new dependency is module-init-tools [kernel.org], which replace modutils for module loading, etc.

    • Re:Dependencies? (Score:4, Informative)

      by DarkMan ( 32280 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @11:11PM (#6412482) Journal
      There is only really module-init-tools, rather than modutils.

      The main reason for this change is that there is now a kernel level module loader. This is for various changes, so that drivers will be handled in exactly the same manner whether they are loaded as a module, or included in the main kernel image. This makes a number of problems in driver writing, and a bunch of idiosyncrities just go away. For example, you should be able to load multiple copies of a driver, compiled into the main kernel. Previously, you had to use them as modules to work that trick. This is important in situations like three identical soundcards.

      I believe that is the only required (significant and normally needed) chage to userland tools. Other tools will benefit from updating, to support new features, but that's always the case, and not required. Note that the kernel aught to boot without it - just be less useful if you use modules.

      It's worth noting that the sound infrasturcture changed from OSS, to primerly ALSA. OSS is still in, but marked DEPRECATED, so at some point over 2.6, you aught to expect to shift to ALSA sound. It aught to be painless - ALSA supports OSS emulation, so you can phase apps through that. I can't think of any other userland level changes for 2.5 (at least, that impact on your average commodity PC desktop / server - If your're using LVM / md stuff, I think that there might be a shift in there).

      One fun change is that you shouldn't need to use ide-scsi emulation to drive CD burners anymore (though that'll require updating userland tools). That's a really useful one, particulary for newcomers [0].

      [0] Windows actually also does the 'pretend it's a SCSI device' trick too - but hides it a lot better.

      • It's worth noting that the sound infrasturcture changed from OSS, to primerly ALSA. OSS is still in, but marked DEPRECATED, so at some point over 2.6, you aught to expect to shift to ALSA sound. It aught to be painless - ALSA supports OSS emulation, so you can phase apps through that.

        Hmmm... It sounds like the the bad practices like
        cat wow.au > /dev/audio
        won't disappear for another period. I was looking forward to default ALSA in 2.6.x but till the programs keep using the old API there is no chanc

  • Hopefully it will be more stable then 2.4x in smp (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:49PM (#6412356) Journal
    I have a feeling I am going to be modded as a troll but I have karma to burn.

    I use to be a big fan of linux but the latest 2.4x came with a bad vm in the so called stable release branch and I heard of dismal uptimes for smp systems with 4 or more processors. Infact Debian still uses the 2.2 kernel by default because of the bugs sorrounding 2.4

    I am no longer in IT but if I was I would be more in favor of FreeBSD. I heard 5.0 is alot more scalable then the 4.x branch.

    Anyway its reputation for those who are not Linux fanatics on slashdot will be better. Linux 2.0 was rock solid. However the quality has gone down hill recently. Yes Linux 2.4 can scale quite well but in real world uses filesystem corruptions, xinet freezing, and kernel panics happen on smp hardware.

    Since Linus now wors at OSDL he can now test these features on high end hardware. Linux is stable on pc class hardware but that is all most kernel hackers have to test the kernel.

    • Re:Hopefully it will be more stable then 2.4x in s (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah, FreeBSD 5 being more scalable than 4 isn't saying much, its still probably below 2.4. No troll, look at the archives - some guy couldn't run 3 SETIs and 1 ssh session on his 4 processor box without them grinding each other to crap on kernel locks... and SETI only enters the kernel a couple of times every 5 seconds or so!! FreeBSD 5 is also having stability problems. FreeBSD isn't a bad OS, but come on, FreeBSD 5 isn't ready yet my good chap.

      Your next paragraph about filesystem corruption, etc is misi

    • I only have one 4-processer machine, but the 2.4 kernels were wonderful on it. It got 2.4.3 when 2.4.3 was hot off of the presses, then ran without reboot or any glitch until it was shut down last month for hardware upgrades. At that point, I put 2.4.21 on it just for fun. Uptime was something like 1.5 years at that point. 2.4.3 is timestamped over 2 years ago, so it could be as long as that.

      steve
    • Linux *does* scale better than FreeBSD in SMP.

      Regardless, I've had an uptime of 214 days with Linux on a 2-CPU Pentium 4, with a stock RedHat 2.4.18 kernel. The reason it went down was because the computer had to be moved from one location to another ...

      Yes, I've noticed instability on the stable kernel - but that happened mostly with my own kernel builds. That is why we have distros - let them heavily test, use their kernels *and* make your purchasing decisions based on their hardware compatibility lis

  • Saving time (Score:5, Funny)

    by MarkCollette ( 459340 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:50PM (#6412366)
    Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox made a joint press release today. In an effort to save time, Linux 2.5.75 will be renamed 2.6.75, to reflect how mature they assume the code is. "We don't feel like bothering with all that 'pre-' crap, so we thought we'd save some time and just jump right into 2.6" reasonned Torvalds. Alan Cox elaborated that "when MS Windows went frm 3.11 staight to 95, they really left us behind. Now that they're at 2003, we've really got to get our shit together to catch up".

  • How to help test the kernel (Score:5, Informative)

    by MichaelCrawford ( 610140 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:52PM (#6412373) Homepage Journal
    Back around when 2.4 was released I wrote a couple articles about how to help test the kernel. They are also helpful when evaluating a new kernel for production systems - you should never just run even a stable kernel on a production system, for while it may work OK for everyone else, it may not work for you.

    The Open Source Development Lab's [osdl.org] Japanese facility [www.osdl.jp] was kind enough to provide the Japanese translations.

    I am looking for translations into other languages for all my Linux Quality Database articles [sunsite.dk] - there are other articles on web application quality and C++ programming, and more will be posted from time to time.

    They are all under the GNU Free Documentation License, but for reasons explained in Which License for Free Documentation? [advogato.org] I am planning to change the license soon to another one.

    • Then the other thing needed is a clear set of guidelines about getting ready to test the new kernel. The 2.4 kernel required a new modutils, and maybe a few other things. We need two things, which of course may already be done, but I haven't looked in the right place:

      1: Additional requirements to run kernel 2.6 above and beyond what ships in current distributions, like modutils.
      2: Gotchas that will show up using lilo/grub to switch between 2.4.x and 2.6.x, and how to work around them.

      Stuff like this needs

  • In my day... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Valar ( 167606 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @10:57PM (#6412401)
    You kids and your new fangled "2.5". Back in my day, the kernel was 0.1, and the only supported boot device was a piece of toast. And we liked it better that way! Stable, unstable? Kids these days are so ungrateful. Back in my day, when linux crashed, not only did it erase your hardrive, but it put you into seizures! But it built character, and that's the way we liked it!
    • whimper snapper... In my days Linux version number was 1/0 and the only boot device was toast crumbs. We had to line them up burnt/crisp/crisp/crisp/burnt in order to get it to boot and we were happy. Soon after that Linus migrated to bagels and thigs got a little more stable.

  • LKML confirm Linux is Dying! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 10, 2003 @11:21PM (#6412530)
    Today LKML confirmed that linux is dying.

    Linus was quoted as saying this will be "the last kernel".

    This announcement, of course, has the same high validity as the claim that *BSD is dying.

  • Time for some 2.6-pre Linux Hosting... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rimu guy ( 665008 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @11:45PM (#6412614) Homepage

    I host a bunch of VPSs based on Jeff Dike's UML (User Mode Linux [sf.net]) project.

    One (of the many) cool things UML allows is for you to try out new kernels without having to dedicate a real box to it. Even if you're only dedicating the box to it between kernel swap reboots. Especially if you're not sure if the new kernel will corrupt your precious partitions.

    The UML 'host' server can continue to run whatever stable 2.4 kernel you need (in my case 2.4.21).

    You SSH from your 'host' server into your hosted UML kernel. Play around, test reliability, fiddle with new features, regression test your apps.

    So anyway, I'm off to grab the new kernel and have a play. Maybe even see if there are any crazies out there who want hosting with the 2.5/2.6-pre kernel.

    - Peter
    RimuHosting - Linux VPS Hosting [rimuhosting.com]

  • Hardware optimisation will be the telling factor. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ratfynk ( 456467 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @12:06AM (#6412677) Journal
    It will be the processor optimisations that will determine the success of 2.6 Linux. The solutions that Microsoft has embrased with hyperthreading might be a non-starter for Linux. The Intel/MS world view is to optimise compilation for Windows and software emu the 32 bit environment, a difficult if not stupid way to do things.

    If the Amd world view of how to achieve 32 bit without emu on a 64 bit platform are to fly then the adoption of AMD by the server world is essential for Linux in the future. Blindly following the Intel/MS lead may lead to kaos. The same as blindly imitating Microsofts functions by reverse engineering, is for programmers.

    The office desktop lock of MS is not the route that Linux should take, the applied advanced scientific computing and clustering is the best route. When a great scientific workstation can be had for the price of a Linux install on a 64 bit AMD system the business computing world will finally start to wake up and take notice.

    • Re:Hardware optimisation will be the telling facto (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Korpo ( 558173 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @01:07AM (#6412850)
      Though we're bordering on offtopic here, because this discussion isn't as closely related to the kernel as it could be, I'm fairly convinced needs no focus as you imply.

      First of all, the Linux kernel is and will be the most important readily available high performance computing platform. I cannot imagine a design decision with more than temporary character that will slow down the kernel. Through constant improvement it will lead on all 64bit platforms, Dec Alpha, PowerPC, IA-64 and x86-64. We all know, in the long run, open source isn't beatable in improvement. The kernel is already far on the right side of that curve.

      Now, should Linux developers at large focus on scientific computing, or the desktop, on both? Actually this is a "no-question". The development force of open source will always distribute itself along its own best interests, not because of what anybody told them. Till now the technical gurus of programming turned the core of the GNU/Linux OS in what it is, but the evergrowing developer community is attracting more and more apps developers (they are simply more readily available). So while the kernel project is readily scaling to bigger and bigger feats, the app world will still aim for the desktop, the poweruser's desktop first. Simply because there are many people that want to provide apps and simply will do. This will not impair kernel development in any way, and anyhow those people have no different needs from the kernel as the scientists have: stable, efficient, robust.

      Since the POSIX and other standards strongly decoupled OS internals from the apps developers (what's going on behind the scenes is no business of the apps developer) we have the power to do it both, in parallel, with no friction.
      • Hopefully the 2.6 kernel will gain rapid acceptance with hardware manufactures, and software writers world wide.

        Yes you are right on target as to why Linux is doing great things. Not releasing 2.6 stable too soon is one of them. The problem is that the business world does not appreciate the reasons why .

        My wife trains new users for an environment that is typical.
        Their server is MS based because of the need to run MS office. The real power apps are served by a Linux server for the medical image data files.

  • FINALLY (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gaccm ( 80209 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @12:24AM (#6412729)
    NEW XCONFIG!!

    Check out: http://www.codemonkey.org.uk/post-halloween-2.5.tx t

    Now, when someone does make xconfig it uses the qt libraries. There is also a make gconfig for all you gnome people. While I like the advancement, it's annoying that even at the deepest level, the kenel, people are forced to repeat functuality for different libraries. While I love the choice, it is just annoying that we so much redundency for these libraries. It seems that programmers are programming more for the libraries than they are for the users. Unfortunitly, I can't think of a way to solve this.
    However, it does suck for anyone who uses another window manager and doesn't have/want qt or gnome. I guess they have to live with ncurses.

    • Re:FINALLY (Score:4, Informative)

      by zdzichu ( 100333 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @01:13AM (#6412871) Homepage Journal
      NEW XCONFIG!!

      You can see the screenshot here [pg.gda.pl].
  • Does anyone know of a website or mailing list on which to find a good .config file for building 2.5.75? I'm not much of a kernel-hacker, and it would be very helpful for me (and I'm sure for a lot of other people too). Just something general that will produce a kernal that can boot and will run Gnome, Mozilla, and Java.

  • Man some people can bitch about nothing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vandan ( 151516 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @04:24AM (#6413311) Homepage
    I've been running a 2.4 kernel since the 2.4-test ones ( I think that's what they were called ) and I have never had any need to rush out and upgrade to the latest version. Sure ... when a newer version comes out I will upgrade for the heck of it, but seriously, if it wasn't for the ability to cat /proc/version, most Linux users wouldn't have a clue what minor or major version they were running.

    So the vm stuff was ripped out half-way through. Did it cause any problems for end users? I didn't notice. If anyone is running a Linux box that is under so much load that they did notice, then maybe they should have upgraded their hardware. It gives me images of someone fanging their VW beetle down the road at 180km/h and complaining that the new suspension seems a little rougher than the old one.

    I've read some examples of 'my sis motherboard craps out when I do this' or 'my oh-so-cheap raid controller doesn't like it when the kernel does this'. These are drivers people! They can't be considered a core part of the kernel. You can't brand a kernel unstable because someone's obscure, 5-year old POS hardware's drivers haven't been updated in years. Buy some real hardware. See above point. I challenge anyone with regular ( ie I can walk down to the local computer store and buy one because it's in production and regular use now ) hardware to tell me what problem they've had with any 2.4 kernel.

    Funny thing is that most people bitching about the supposed instability of early 2.4 and 2.6 kernels most likely upgraded to them as soon as they came out ( just like me ) and bragged to all their Windows-using friends about how stable and fast etc their new kernel is. It's only on Slashdot where it's cool to whinge about how people can break kernel-x just by xxxxxx that they change their tune. And how many of the complainants actually submitted a bug report? MMMmmm?

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