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Linux Kernel 2.6.0-test6 Released 268

Posted by michael from the lazy-sunday dept.
lamont116 writes "The latest in the series of beta kernels was just released by the fine folks who have given us Linux. Enjoy!" The Changelog has a hefty 240K of miscellaneous changes... LWN has an overview of the updates.
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Linux Kernel 2.6.0-test6 Released More

Linux Kernel 2.6.0-test6 Released

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  • 2.6 and Longhorn (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NeoGeo64 ( 672698 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @03:56PM (#7079310) Homepage Journal
    Well, since most likely some varation of the 2.6 kernel will be out when Longhorn is released, this puts Linux in a good position with 2.6's better memory management and IDE support and whatnot...

    • Re:2.6 and Longhorn (Score:5, Interesting)

      by technix4beos ( 471838 ) <cshaiku@gmail.com> on Sunday September 28, 2003 @04:29PM (#7079580) Homepage Journal
      I was thinking about this very thing a few days ago, the fact that Microsoft has basically provided a free gift to the alternative OS camps.

      Think about it. They've continually pushed back the release date of Longhorn, at least three times now, to my recollection. The screenshots they have leaked out, whether they are true or not haven't produced any vote of confidence from the various geeks I've seen comment about it online.

      I'm neither defending Microsoft or trying to put them down, but the fact remains that their competition has been given a lot of breathing room, which I think if used wisely, will show some very large rewards by the time Longhorn comes out in full force.

      One more thing. Let's assume for a moment that Longhorn starts selling on January 1st, 2005. We're being really optimistic, but for the sake of argument, I'll pick this date. Now... in typical Microsoft fashion, and from the history of the IT world, it won't be for at least 6 months before it even makes a significant market shift.

      Who will upgrade to an OS that curtails choices in the file system? Who will spend the money on an OS that hasn't proven itself yet? I'm not talking about Windows itself, but the new Longhorn. The Windows line of products has had varied levels of success, not just due to marketing guidance, but because it has solved some issues for joe user.

      As for Longhorn, the "early adopters" might give it a try, but it will still take quite some time before the mass market checks it out. I predict it will be at least 6 months time before Longhorn starts to make any real significant headway in the market.

      So, given that I'm being optimistic with a date of January 1st, 2005, I really believe that the alternative OS's will have at least two full years before being in any danger from the MS Marketing Machine.

      Just my two cents.

      • Re:2.6 and Longhorn (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Saint Stephen ( 19450 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @04:33PM (#7079605) Homepage Journal
        If I had to bet a dollar I'd bet that MS will fork the "golden build" in early Spring 2005, it'll go gold in Summer, and it'll be generally avaiable in Sept 2005.

        I worked there during the whole "Whistler" cycle -- I got a feel for the cycle.

      • Re:2.6 and Longhorn (Score:3, Insightful)

        by cpeterso ( 19082 )

        Think about it. They've continually pushed back the release date of Longhorn, at least three times now, to my recollection. The screenshots they have leaked out, whether they are true or not haven't produced any vote of confidence from the various geeks I've seen comment about it online.

        Even if many geeks don't like the "user centric" features in the leaked Longhorn screenshots, the screenshots still give GNOME and KDE developers a lot to think about. They are accused of simply stealing Apple's and Micr

        • Re:2.6 and Longhorn (Score:4, Interesting)

          by EvilAlien ( 133134 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @06:04PM (#7080199) Journal
          Hrmm... maybe Microsoft is using (read: bankrolling) the fiaSCO gambit to buy themselves time to finally get Longhorn out.

          However, this gives the rest of the world more time to improve their competing products, which may end up not being in Microsoft's favor given the rapid pace of development outside of Redmond's closed walls.

          Does this mean that Open Source projects could eventually have to send a thank you card to Microsoft?

      • Re:2.6 and Longhorn (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Jameth ( 664111 )
        "So, given that I'm being optimistic with a date of January 1st, 2005, I really believe that the alternative OS's will have at least two full years before being in any danger from the MS Marketing Machine."

        The issue is equally much how strongly Microsoft can get Longhorn onto newly-bought boxes. That's always been where they used their monopoly and marketing sway.

        Also, the marketing machine goes into effect LONG before they have any products. Just look at the way Intel got everyone to benchmark the new At
        • True, but on the other hand. Say you bought that new Amd64. And then a month later you learned that the intel was coming out. Now you might then say Hey great, these tests show that for MY use the Amd64 is exactly the right one. Yippie I guessed right.

          Of course it might also turn the other way. Oops you bought the Amd64 cause it was better then the P4 you had. And now it just weeks later Intel got a chip out that performs better for YOUR use but you ain't got the money to do anoter upgrade.

          Sure marketing

      • Ehm? Curtails choice of filesytem? Exactly when did you have a choice when using windows? Well okay you got a choice. Between fat32 and ntfs.

        According to some people, the "lets make linux simple crowd", the fact that Microsoft MIGHT go to a single filesystem is a clear advantage. Less choice to confuse you.

        More likely considering that for the moment you can turn winfs off, it seems you actually get more choice :)

        I have no idea what Longhorn is going to be. Oh sure I read the articles. But that means jack

        • Sure have tried installing OS/2 on clone hardware. I used OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 to determine what hardware was IN a box, since I had never once had it fail in it's detection. Of course, I can't even install it on any of my current machines because the software is now so out of date..

          but, back in '95-'98, it was a LOT better than anything else that I'd found for hardware support.

        • Re:2.6 and Longhorn (Score:3, Insightful)

          by dtfinch ( 661405 ) *
          > vi VS emacs arguments are pointless and a waste of time.
          >
          > vi is the best.

          Old Stallman post:

          ---------
          FROM: Richard Stallman
          DATE: 12/30/1991 06:18:13
          SUBJECT: Should everone use vi?

          Once in a while a crank appears and says that Emacs is lousy and we should all switch to vi.

          I`m sure lots of you are ready to declaim at length why that isn`t so. But I`d like to suggest that it would be better not to bother. These days, few people are likely to believe such a claim, so there`s no need to refute it
        • Ehm? Curtails choice of filesytem? Exactly when did you have a choice when using windows? Well okay you got a choice. Between fat32 and ntfs.

          Don't forget... Longhorn give you a choice of WinFS and WinFS. If you get the Platinum Server Lock-In Edition they will throw in a third choice of WinFS for free!
      • Think about it. They've continually pushed back the release date of Longhorn, at least three times now, to my recollection.

        They've never even announced a date for Longhorn. What on earth are you talking about?

        The screenshots they have leaked out, whether they are true or not haven't produced any vote of confidence from the various geeks I've seen comment about it online.

        As if that matters. Those are early, early alpha shots, as we all know. All the cool builds with the 3D acceleration are in a differe

        • Re:2.6 (correctly formatted, ignore previous) (Score:5, Informative)

          by technix4beos ( 471838 ) <cshaiku@gmail.com> on Sunday September 28, 2003 @07:30PM (#7080753) Homepage Journal
          I'll go through your questions one by one...

          >> They've never even announced a date for Longhorn. What on earth are you talking about?

          I quote from one of their Press Pass [microsoft.com] documents they have online at microsoft.com:

          "Over the course of 2004 you'll see a couple of releases in the betas for "Longhorn" and we'll see that coming to market in 2005.

          Now, I'm sure that many of you have heard about or wonder about the possibility of whether we're going to do something before "Longhorn," is there an interim release, and that's something that I don't expect us to do. Currently we have some additional releases that are coming out as follow-ons to the XP Media Center Edition and the Tablet PC Edition so we've got some great advances and fit and finish and addressing additional international marketplaces with new handwriting recognition, new guide data for Europe for the Media Center and so on.

          So you'll see some good incremental moves there but really the weight of the company, the weight of all the people in the Windows client division and across the platform's division, the weight of that effort that we're doing is around "Longhorn" and that's what we're focused on and we hope to get you all really pulling the same way so we can come out with a huge wave of excitement for the industry when "Longhorn" ships in 2005."

          (quotes and italics mine.)

          Several online sources have credited varying target dates for Longhorn, but all generally agree that 2005 will be the earliest that it will be available to the mass market:
          Longhorn Betas in 2004, GA in 2005 [entmag.com] (ENT News)
          Analyst Pegs Longhorn Release at 2006 [entmag.com] (ENT News)
          Microsoft Pushes Back 'Longhorn' Release [opentechsupport.net] (Open Tech Support)
          A Longhorn Delay? Not Quite [wininformant.com] (WinInfo)
          Microsoft announces Longhorn release date [zdnet.co.uk] (CNet News.com)
          (I have no affiliation with these sources.)

          Microsoft themselves show that 2005 is the target date of Longhorn in a slide picture [winsupersite.com]. (png image)

          >> As if that matters. Those are early, early alpha shots, as we all know. All the cool builds with the 3D acceleration are in a different Microsoft lab anyway that hasn't had one of their builds leaked.

          First, can you prove there are "cool builds" that will have 100% of the suggested features in a shipping version of Longhorn? Secondly, the history of Microsoft's software release stategy has been plainly made clear numerous times. Hype, Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, Buzzwords-o'-the-day, Gross Appropriation (oh sorry, I mean Innovation), and just downright unfullfilled expectations litter the computer timescape.

          For a company that has been in the software business of well over 25 years, one would think that with their talk of innovation and "exciting new time-saving" features, we would all have an operating system on our machines that used voice controlled openGL hyper speed interfaces, smart enough to do your work for you while you browsed sites like slashdot. Isn't the entire point of using a computer to save time and be more productive? This sadly is not the case today .

          >> I'm not really sure what breathing room you're talking about. The developer preview of Longhorn is coming out later this year. The list of features Longhorn already boasts is staggering, and I doubt within two years that ANY Linux projects will come close. We'll still be stucking using X11 with a hacked on desktop simulator, business as usual.

    • Re:2.6 and Longhorn (Score:3, Insightful)

      by NeoGeo64 ( 672698 )
      Agreed. Longhorn is just way too different from previous versions of Windows - and not a good different either.

      They're not rewriting the code, they're just adding flashy new eyecandy and DRM. If Microsoft wants a good version of Windows, they need to dump the entire NT garbage and rewrite Windows from scratch.

      Apple got a clue with OSX and came to the conslusion that the classic kernel just was never going to be stable, so they ditched it and now they have a *BSD core. Apple's happy, *NIX users are
    • OK, which sounds more likely:
      • Windows loses out because of the IDE support in Linux 2.6.
      • Linux 2.6 loses out because of WinFS and Dotnet in Windows.
      Take your time. We've got plenty of it, haven't we?

  • Slashdot THIS instead! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @03:57PM (#7079315) Homepage
    BitTorrent links here:

    It still seems wrong to improve performance through a Slashdotting, but the more the merrier!
  • Wasn't impressed...

    I kept getting:

    "hda: lost interrupt" during the boot sequence. I gave up after about 3 minutes of those messages while it was reading the partition table. Went back to 2.4.22 for the time being.

    Dinivin

    • Re:Gave it a shot... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Ianoo ( 711633 )
      The only way bugs get fixed is if you report them. Maybe you should submit a bug describing your hardware and boot messages so the kernel dudes can get to fixing it for test7...

    • Re:Gave it a shot... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Karamchand ( 607798 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @04:02PM (#7079373)
      Since you tried out a development kernel you seem to be a developer or at least part of quality assurance. Therefor you are not allowed to ignore bugs like that and go back to the working version. Instead you have to find out the source of the problem, write a nice bug report and file it. For sheer hard work supply a fix as well.

      • Re:Gave it a shot... (Score:5, Informative)

        by dinivin ( 444905 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @04:15PM (#7079473)
        Since you tried out a development kernel you seem to be a developer or at least part of quality assurance. Therefor you are not allowed to ignore bugs like that and go back to the working version. Instead you have to find out the source of the problem, write a nice bug report and file it.

        If I had the time at the moment to find the source of the problem, I would... However, that's not an option today. I have, however, sent along a nice bug report describing the problem and my system configuration.

        Dinivin

    • Re:Gave it a shot... (Score:3, Informative)

      by josh253 ( 32868 )
      I had that problem with -test1. Got around it by turning off ACPI support.

  • Red Hat users (Score:5, Informative)

    by Plug ( 14127 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @03:58PM (#7079324) Homepage
    I expect Arjan to have updated Red Hat packages soon at http://people.redhat.com/arjanv/2.5/ [redhat.com]

    Remember though that some things have changed between 2.4 and 2.6 that can't just be worked around by installing new packages. (USB module names, some mount points, that kind of thing.) If you want a clean boot you will have to change some of the init scripts, and this will break booting 2.4. So it's a bit all or nothing at the moment, and I recommend people who aren't convinced it will do everything they need it to do (I couldn't get my network card working under 2.6) stay on 2.4 until it's released proper.

    Check out http://thomer.com/linux/migrate-to-2.6.html [thomer.com] and http://www.fearthecow.net/index.pl?section=guest&p age=kernel [fearthecow.net] for the information for making these kernels work on RHL.

  • To torrent or not to torrent (Score:4, Informative)

    by arnoroefs2000 ( 122990 ) * on Sunday September 28, 2003 @03:59PM (#7079332) Homepage

    The torrent for the new kernel: click me! [utwente.nl]

  • did they remove the SCO code? (Score:5, Funny)

    by civilengineer ( 669209 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @04:03PM (#7079378) Homepage Journal
    i.e. the unnecessary blank spaces and newline charaters.

  • ATA-Raid anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 28, 2003 @04:06PM (#7079412)
    Is there someone except me who is missing ataraid? Yes, i know those are crap etc. but i am using one with my Abit KT7A-Raid (HPT370). I guess it got lost somwhere in the 2.5 kernel tree, but it looks like noone feels responsible for that.
    I mean 2.4 is not bad at all but i also want to test the new features / performance of the 2.6 kernel series.

    BTW.: Is Someone with experiences in original Highpoint drivers in here? If, could you tell me sth. about performance and stability?
    • This OS [freebsd.org] supports "HighPoint HPT366 ATA66, HPT370 ATA100, HPT372 ATA133, HPT374 ATA133." SoS does an excellent job of maintaining the ATA RAID drivers, and is innovating all the time.
    • I have a 2x120 gig Maxtor mirror on an Abit KT7 as a server. It's unbelievable fast serving NFS shares, movies and videos Start Right Now when accessed across the network from a second Gentroo box. It's so fast I used to check the server for drive activity, thinking the media may have been on a local cache. It's running on the standard 2.4.x kernel modules as a Linux RAID.

      Prior to that W2k was installed on my second Abit, a KT7A, on a HP stripe. The Gentoo second boot never spawned errors reading from the

  • love-sources (Score:4, Informative)

    by flatface ( 611167 ) * on Sunday September 28, 2003 @04:07PM (#7079421)
    It's a version behind, but love-sources improves desktop speed by a LOT in 2.6.x kernels. If that's what you want, go here: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=88999 [gentoo.org]

    No, you don't need to be using Gentoo.

  • Yay... for most people. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Leffe ( 686621 )
    Yet another beta lacking the UMSDOS module rewrite... does anyone know when it will be finished, I can't even remember who maintains it.

    I guess I'll have to stick with 2.4.23-pre5 for the time being - I don't really feel like hacking away trying to repartition my 8 Gb HD... buying a new one would be a good idea though... *adds to TODO*

  • Jump it to 3.0 ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ltjohhed ( 231735 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @04:34PM (#7079619) Homepage
    When will we ever see LVM-support out-of-the-box in the default kernel ?

    They're fast to adress common problems of today, like SMP, hence they don't seem to find the use for LVM that UN*X's did 10 years ago...

    • Re:Jump it to 3.0 ? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tupshin ( 5777 )
      LVM2 works on top of device mapper which is part of the stock 2.6-test kernels. Enable CONFIG_BLK_DEV_DM when building the kernel.

      -Tushi

  • Mirror! (Score:3, Informative)

    by idiot900 ( 166952 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @04:37PM (#7079636)
    Time for me to plug the mirror I'm affiliated with...

    Wuarchive's kernel.org mirror [wustl.edu]
  • I'm preparing an end-user 2.6 switching howto here [detached.be] Pass the word.
    • Now I can understand how to switch to 2.6. next two questions to answer befor to do in on the production: why and when. I mean, what are the major reasons for me to switch my systems (servers and desktops) to 2.6. As for "when" I guess it's when a level of instability of fresh baken code will be compensated by just listed reasons to switch.

      So, what are (at least three) major reasons to switch from 2.4 to 2.6? Of course besides "trying the new kernel" (is there anything I can notice without being ponted at

      • A more responsive desktop (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Goonie ( 8651 ) *
        The one thing desktop users will notice is that 2.6 makes for a noticeably snappier, more responsive desktop.
      • I'll give you 3 good reasons why 2.6 is a "bit" better than 2.4

        1: NSA security patches included into kernel as "Alternate security system"

        2: Default sound system of ALSA

        3: SMB-Unix extensions for the new CIFS, allows you to remotely mount /dev/ from another computer

        I look at Linux as this for a secure system. Take a beefy machine and put UML on it. Now, use NSA security patches on every UML sub-machine. Have all of those /dev mounted to the real machine by way of SMB-Unix extension and USB rootplug on t
        • 1. Does it include RBAC (Role-based Access control)?

          2. in 2.4 ALSA worked only on 40% boxes for me (60% among x86). I am looking forward to have ALSA on PPC.

          3. Are you saying it will be different (more general?) than CONFIG_BLK_DEV_NBD (Network block device support), which is already in 2.4?

          Although I am not sure I understand you further example. But thanks anyway - I already see 4 different reasons to try it on production systems (adding the responsivity of desktops answered in another comment).

  • Simple question (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 28, 2003 @05:03PM (#7079810)
    Two weeks ago I paid SCO compliance fee for the 2.4 kernel. If I download and use the new edition, would that entail another $699, would it be free, or is there some upgrade fee somewhere in the middle?

  • My only problem... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dimensio ( 311070 ) <darkstar@LISPiglou.com minus language> on Sunday September 28, 2003 @05:09PM (#7079868)
    I decided to play around with the 2.6.0 tests after the last release (test5). After a bit of effort, I got nearly everything working except for wavetable MIDI support with my SB Live! card. Rather irritating, since it can't seem to create /dev/sequencer properly (and I had it working just fine with the alsa driver module in 2.4.x).

    Otheriwse, things run smoothly with occasional bugs (the bttv driver sometimes flakes out under heavy load if I'm not using 'overlay').

  • ARM Support (Score:5, Insightful)

    by riptalon ( 595997 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @05:39PM (#7080052)

    Until recently this would all have been fine but now I have my new Sharp Zaurus SL-C760 I am actually concerned about other architectures appart from x86 ;-) At the moment for just generic ARM support in 2.4 you need a large patch from Russell King and then more patches for the Zaurus specific stuff. The last rmk patch was a month and a half ago for 2.6.0-test2 and as far as I know, no one is even working on porting the Zaurus specific stuff to 2.6.

    I don't really know what the arguements are for the present development model where most of the non-x86 architectures are kept separate from the mainline development but I really don't see how it can be a good idea. I guess I don't see what the difference is between individual subsystems, for instance, and support for different architectures. In both cases individuals or teams work on their own but in the subsystem case everything gets merged back in, by the time the kernel it declared stable, whereas for non-x86 architectures this never happens.

    It seems to me that given the large size of these architecture patches, their maintainers must spend most of their time just updating them to keep them in sync with the new kernel versions, rather than actually fixing bug or adding new features. Also the fact that ARM users cannot test the latest kernels because there are no rmk patches for them can only lead to a "negative feedback" situation which will hurt kernel development. In general anything that unnecessarily fragments kernel development cannot be a positive thing.

    • Re:ARM Support (Score:2, Insightful)

      by yarbo ( 626329 )
      maybe 2.6-test2 didn't get enough feedback for the developers to work on porting test 3-5?

    • Re:ARM Support (Score:4, Informative)

      by Chops ( 168851 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @08:46PM (#7081132)
      FWIW, the discussion of (lack of) ARM merging in 2.6 can be found (in summarized form) here [zork.net]. Linus is quoted therein:


      I don't think it's a failure. Why _should_ one tree have to try to make everybody happy? We want to try to make it easier to keep the couplings in place by striving for portable infrastructure etc, but we would only be hampered by a philosophy that says "everything has to work in tree X", since that just means that you can't afford to break things.

      I'd much rather keep the freedom to break stuff, and have many separate trees that break _different_ things, and let them all co-exist in a friendly rivalry.

      And my tree is just one tree in that forest.

      So it's not a bug - it's a FEATURE!
  • Andrew Morton [socallinuxexpo.org], who will be maintaining the Linux 2.6 kernel, will be speaking at SCALE 2x [socallinuxexpo.org] Other 2.6 developers include William Irwin, and Patrick Mochel.

  • No Wonder "They" Are Afraid (Score:3, Insightful)

    by EzInKy ( 115248 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @06:18PM (#7080305)
    IBM, SGI, INTEL, HP, Navy, Redhat, SUSE, Debian, and boatloads of other patches contributed by other companies, educational institutions, and independent devolopers working together for the profit of all.

  • Knoppix with 2.6.0-testX?? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bstadil ( 7110 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @06:24PM (#7080354) Homepage
    We need Knoppix or a derivative with the latest test kernel,

    That way we can get a whole lot more testing done with very little disruption on nornal system?

    I tried to make one but I couldn't get it to boot, so maybe someone better qualified can try and if successful post Torrent file.

  • Has anyone been able to get the ATI fglrx drivers to build with a 2.6-test kernel? That's the only thing stopping me from using it, I've been drooling over the CPU throttling and other ACPI features for some time now, but I can't do w/o my crazy-fast OpenGL either!

    Torn,
    Mike
  • News for obsessive-compulsive upgraders. Stuff that antimatters.

  • Boring SCO References (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dryan ( 709968 ) *
    Hmm i think i have counted an average of 2419 SCO jokes per story. Everyone is so incredibly original.

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