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GNU is Not Unix Operating Systems Software Linux

Linux 2.6.0 Expected In Mid-December 270

Posted by timothy from the send-more-penguins dept.
Ridgelift writes "CRN is reporting the release of Linux 2.6.0 in mid-December. 'Torvalds, Linux's lead developer and now an OSDL Fellow, and Linux kernel maintainer Andrew Morton this week released the test10 version of Linux 2.6 after a three-year development effort. A final test11 version is expected before they sign off on the production version next month.' Get ready for 'major scalability improvements, faster performance, enhanced support for embedded systems and, to a lesser extent,' a kernel that 'supplies desktop systems with better USB and FireWire support.'"
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Linux 2.6.0 Expected In Mid-December More

Linux 2.6.0 Expected In Mid-December

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  • This isn't unexpected (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The One KEA ( 707661 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @07:34AM (#7567208) Journal
    I've been running -testX kernels for a while now and the claims made about all the improvements are true -- 2.6 is a far better kernel than 2.4, IMO.

    The prediction that akpm made about mid-December sounds about right as well -- 2.6.0-test10 could be 2.6.0 right now and I doub there'd be any showstoppers to block it.
    • I've been running -testX kernels for a while now and the claims made about all the improvements are true -- 2.6 is a far better kernel than 2.4, IMO.

      What's taking so long anyway? I thought Linus's new grand master plan was quicker releases of major versions. 3 years seems like an eternity in the electronic world. In that time Windows has gone from 2000 to XP to 2003 for crying out loud! They're jumping all over the fscking version map and all we have to show for it is a lousy .2 subversion jump? 3

      • I prefer better, even it it takes a bit longer.

        "All good things come to those who wait."

      • But really, think about it.

        In the past 9-10 years, windows has gone from 3.x to 95 and NT, to 2000, to 2003. In the same time, Linux has gone from 1.0 to (just about) 2.6

        The biggest shift in windows-world was from 3.x to 9x / NT in 1995. Linux went from 1.2.x to 2.0 in 1996. Since then, we've had 2.2, 2.4, and 2.6, all of which have had improvements that would have qualified for major releases in windows.

        Of course, Linux is a kernel, and windows is quite a bit heavier, so it's a case of tangerines and or
        • Actually Win9x to NT was a major leap as that was when the 16-bit stuff was ditched. There was no corresponding revolution in Linux, just a *lot* of incremental changes. Although some changes were big, their scopes were a lot smaller and as you say, Linux is just a kernel.
          • Sure, it's picking nits, but still ...

            Windows went:
            1.x --> 2.x --> 3.x --> 95 --> 98 --> ME --> XP Home --> Longhorn

            Windows NT (completely separate beast) went:
            NT 3.x --> NT 4.x --> 2000 --> XP Pro --> Longhorn

            The only major shift were from 3.x to 95 (GUI and mostly 32-bit), and from ME to XP (GUI and fully 32-bit).
            • Picking even smaller nits, XP Home and XP Pro are very simmilar and both based on the 2000 kernel. The 2000 kernel was only really a evolutionary change from the NT. The big jump was going away from the 95/98/ME stuff. To be fair, Windows 2 (almost unusable) to Windows 3 (386 support) was also a pretty big one.

              Perhaps my perception of a more continual process with Linux is because the source changes and discussion groups are public.

      • In that time Windows has gone from 2000 to XP to 2003 for crying out loud!

        Oh, yeah, that was a leap alright! New splash screen and a different colour scheme. Whoop-de-do.

        TWW

        • you forgot about incrementally less stability and security with each change.
          Although I haven't REALLY got deeply in 2003 yet, what I have seen doesn't really impress the hell out of me; It might barely be better than XP.

        • Re:This isn't unexpected (Score:4, Funny)

          by sharkey ( 16670 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @12:24PM (#7569431)
          Oh, yeah, that was a leap alright! New splash screen and a different colour scheme. Whoop-de-do.

          Come on, give a little bit of credit. Starting with XP, you can open .ZIP files without findng, downloading and installing a archiving software application. What other operating system can read compressed file archives right after install?

          • The first time I saw this in XP I thought it would be sweet. But it ended up crashing the explorer and then it restarted application bar and lost all my system tray icons.

            XP has been fairly stable, but that wasn't very impressive.

            I'd rather they just shipped a freeware ZIP application then build something buggy into the OS.
      • In the last 12 years M$ has really only sold 3 kernels:
        • Win3.0, Win31, Win95, Win98, WinME all built on the DOS kernel.
        • Various versions of the WinNT kernel
        • Various versions of the XP kernel

        There has been some tweaking of the kernel for market positioning and bug fixes, but no other major architectual overhauls. Everything else has been modifications to the window manger which is the equivilent to a new KDE or Gnome version. Let's not forget that M$ is impoverished comared to Linux. [businessweek.com]

        • Re:This isn't unexpected (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Ianoo ( 711633 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @11:00AM (#7568518) Journal
          The NT and XP kernel are the same. XP's is just an incremental improvement over the NT4 Kernel (it's almost the exact same Kernel in Win2000 aka NT5). Microsoft have just moved things in and out of the Kernel since NT3 to improve performance (such as the full DirectX support added to W2K rather than the awful DirectX emulation in NT4).

          Also, while it's true that the 9x series are built on top of DOS, the same as 3.11, there were a significant number of changes to support 32-bit and things like pre-emptive rather than cooperative multitasking. Not quite as many changes as Microsoft would have us believe (it certainly wasn't the 100% new 16-bit-free operating system everyone expected based on what they were saying), but certainly a lot of changes under the hood.

          Lastly, 3.x never had a Kernel, it was effectively a big graphical library and program launcher, and not much more.

          That given, I'd revise your list to:
          • DOS Kernel (if you can call it a Kernel!)
          • 9x Kernel (which built on DOS/3x)
          • NT Kernel (featuring in 2K and XP with tweaks)
          I agree entirely that Linux has to be taken in a larger context. Considering that in the same time it's taken to go from 2K to XP we've seen Gnome go from v1 to v2 and KDE go from v2 to v3, which were much more significant changes, I'd say that Linux on the desktop is advancing more rapidly.

          Besides, there's no reason to rewrite a Kernel from scratch if you get it right the first time. There don't seem to be that many fundamental problems with the Linux Kernel, so the continued process of tweaking and gradual improvement seems set to continue. Microsoft, on the other hand, had to write a new Kernel because 9x was such a horrendous mess and lacked quite a lot of modern features and elegance.

          • Re:This isn't unexpected (Score:4, Informative)

            by spongman ( 182339 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @12:54PM (#7569845)
            You're correct, right up until you imply that NT was written to replace 9x. NT shipped before win95, and it existed within MS well before win95 was even conceived. win95 was writen because they wanted to ship win32 to customers and NT didn't run as well as OS/2 or Win3.1 on consumer-level machines.

            There was an effort to write a completely new win32-based replacement for win31, cougar was the codename for the 32-bit DOS kernel, and panther was the win32 core, but panther was canned and cougar was merged into chicago (win95).

  • What the fuck? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @07:34AM (#7567209)
    Morton acknowledged that the XFS and JFS file systems, which were originally developed under a Unix license and then ported over to Linux, could be a sticky issue that lawyers can exploit. "SGI did develop it. It could be [SCO] has a legitimate case there, not technically, but on the letter of the law," Morton said.

    • Re:What the fuck? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Zapdos ( 70654 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @09:16AM (#7567576)
      They were actually developed on white paper. The first implementation may have been on a UNIX. Both HP and SGI are aware of license agreements and code ownership. All of their programs are fully developed on white paper, patents applied for, granted or pending, then creation of the FIRST implementation. In doing business this way, HP and SGI own the technologies, SCO has no leg to stand on.

  • Now you can have those 64 CPU machines that you've always wanted. Hmm, I wonder if the new kernel will come with any legal exemptions like "Not to be used by any employee or lawyer of SCO"?

    That'd be nice.
    • And also, it would violate the GPL and GNUs criteria for software freedom.
      • If SCO loses its suit, it will be found in violation of the GPL, because it added extra conditions onto the end of the GPL. If SCO loses, they will be unable to further distribute that GPL'd code (section 4). So they just kicked themselves out of distributing Linux 2.6.
        • Unfortunately, they can still distribute other GPLed software e.g. samba. But on the other hand, if SCO loses, there will not be any SCO when IBM and Red Hat are done with them.
          • They can't distribute Samba if they at one time violated Samba distribution in reference to the GPL. Of course it will be a big legal hullaballoo and SCO will likely be dead by then, but...yeah.
    • Let's submit a patch that will reformat and zero out the root file system whenever it detects a login from a D. McBride.

  • Linux 2.6: I can only recommend it! (Score:5, Informative)

    by quigonn ( 80360 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @07:37AM (#7567217) Homepage
    We're running 2.6.0-test9 on several production machines at work, and we had absolutely no problem, so far, but a huge improvement on performance instead. The only thing one has to care about is that 2.6.0 requires module-init-tools instead of modutils. It's especially important to read the upgrade guide, so that one can easily switch back to 2.4.x even when using modules (not that I would miss 2.4.x, but you never know... not all people will have such flawless upgrade processes as I did).

    • Re:Linux 2.6: I can only recommend it! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @07:49AM (#7567252) Journal
      Mod this sucker up!

      It will save you countless headaches if you read the files about module-init. I have been using the linux kernels since 2.0x but never had an upgrade break a system. It totally ruined my redhat 9 box doing that.

      I upgraded to module-init and after that 2.4 wouldn't boot. grr.

      Is there a way to have both installed so I could dual boot 2.4 and 2.6?

      I switched back to my more upgrade friendly FreeBSD until 2.6 was more stabilized and more distro's supported it. My guess is Gentoo would be the first.

    • As far as I know Linux 2.4 also needed module-init-tools.

      Anyway, I have a USB device here which had problems with a bug in the uhci driver of 2.4, and there was a patch for it for 2.6.0-test2. I used that, and it worked fine. Later, I moved the device to a different computer, so I compiled a new kernel. By that time, -test9 had come out (which included the patch btw), so I used that.

      I don't know why, but the other computer was completely unstable with that, crashing several times an hour. This was o

    • Why are you running a test kernel on several PRODUCTION machines?
      • It depends on the production, doesn't it? I mean, if you have a machine that collates addresses and prints mailing labels, then you can run with the test kernel and if it gives you better performance and works, who cares if it's "only for testing"? What's the problem?
      • Depends. I worked at a place that used 6 Proc with 4 Gigs of memory systems that had 20 to 30 heavy users at any one time. We were using the 2.4.9 Redhat kernel and the machines would crash after 3 or 4 days. Considering we had 300 or 400 machines, you can take a guess what oncall was like. Well, I took a couple of the mid-level problem ones and replace the kernels with 2.4.18 release canidates (I played with the patches) and they did not crash for several weeks afterwards. Some servers never went down unle
      • Depends what they're doing, and what the expected failure modes are. If you've already got a cluster of webservers, it might make perfect sense to throw a 2.6 machine into the pool. If it fails it'll only be one hit in every so many, and it's easy to pull out once this happens. Perhaps you could do something like run your ad server on a new machine. Even if it fails, customers don't think the site is down.

        And from this, and from running tests on it, you know if 2.6 is going to offer you anything.

        There are

    • I upgraded my laptop to 2.6.0-test4 back in September, after reading this article [slashdot.org].

      The previous kernel (2.4.20, Slackware 9) worked, but had a couple of rough edges. The most serious (particularly on a laptop) was Compaq's weird ACPI implementation that 2.4.20 couldn't figure out. After I booted 2.6.0-test4, I was able to read off all the information I needed. Much easier to use in the field!

      In the process of upgrading I did indeed break the 2.4 modutils. But since 2.6 works so well, I really don't care

  • good stuff (Score:5, Interesting)

    by inode_buddha ( 576844 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @07:40AM (#7567225) Journal
    I've tried several -test kernels, and the desktop performance boost blows my mind. I could probably stay with -test10 and akpm's patches, but that's not what the kernel team is really looking for (I think). Last I heard, They really want people to hammer on stuff like PnP, scalability, USB, and ACPI.

    Any ideas on how much akpm's patches end up becoming "mainstream"? After reading the changelogs (and using the patches), I think it'd be a good idea.

    • Re:good stuff (Score:5, Interesting)

      by crimsun ( 4771 ) <crimsun AT ubuntu DOT com> on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @08:28AM (#7567400) Homepage
      All of the critical fixes from -mm are pushed into Linus's current tree. Just take a look at the "Merged" section immediately following "Latest Linus tree" here [theaimsgroup.com]; repeat with the previous -testX-mmY patch announcements.

      Now take a look at this [lwn.net] under the "Andrew Morton" heading and notice how many of those patch headings ring a bell. Yessir, he has been kickin' arse and taking names.

  • Newsflash - Christmas Postponed.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Channard ( 693317 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @07:41AM (#7567228) Journal
    NEWSFLASH: Chrismas has been postponed as Santa has had an injunction placed on him by Linux copyright claimants SCO.

    'We intercepted a number of letters from Linux users to Mr Claus, requesting that he bring them the new 2.6 Linux Kernel for Christmas, and given that at least 50% of them have been good, we believe he was going to supply the requested code' said Daryl McScrooge, head of SCO's 'Grabbit and Runne' division.

    'Linux 2.6 was of course entirely written by ourselves and the tooth fairy and to protect our rights we have taken out an injunction preventing Father Christmas from delivering any presents this Christmas. We believe this is a fair and legal action. And anyway, I never did get that bike I asked for.'

  • IDE support on Dell Latitude D600 (Score:5, Informative)

    by cerberusss ( 660701 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @07:51AM (#7567256) Journal
    I'm running this new kernel to get full support on whatever IDE chipset my Dell Latitude D600 laptop uses. Combined with the better performance this kernel really rocks.

  • Not to nitpick, but (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @07:51AM (#7567257) Journal
    I thought this was all Linus' doing - in the LWN text, he says that Andrew is off for a couple of weeks so he may release a test11 before Andrew decides to take it on for release management...

    Simon

  • They seem to have som problems though... (Score:5, Informative)

    by errl ( 43525 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @08:07AM (#7567312) Homepage
    A problem [kerneltrap.org], potentially delaying release? Seems that they don't really know what causes it as of yet...
  • apply the mm patches which include bug fixes as well as nice to have other features. Prehaps its time to try 2.6 in production

    Rus

  • The Best OS Ever! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dimss ( 457848 )
    Linux 2.6.0-test9 is the best kernel I've ever used. Waiting impatiently for release! Now I don't have any reasons to use BSD :)

    JFS still has some issues and no DRI on Radeon 7500. Hope that will be OK soon.
    • JFS still has some issues

      Hey, that's interesting! I had issues with JFS hanging (well not hanging but endless looping) on fsck on one box. I though it was the HD at first but swapping it out wasn't an immediate option, so I switched the problem partition to XFS and haven't had problems since (yet). I use JFS on pretty much everything else so I'd like to see whatever this is fixed.

  • My bet (Score:3, Funny)

    by Vilim ( 615798 ) <ryanNO@SPAMjabberwock.ca> on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @08:41AM (#7567436) Homepage
    Sure, mid-December might be when its ready. But I'm sticking with my bet of a Christmas day release. Linus likes to release kernels on holidays (he did one on christmas a while back and noone can forget the greased turkey). Perhaps he will name this one the greased reindeer or something :p

  • Red Hat builds (Score:4, Informative)

    by Bernie ( 38226 ) <mb/slash@dcs.qmul.ac.uk> on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @09:06AM (#7567521)

    It's worth reminding RH/Fedora users that Arjan van de Ven maintains kernel RPMs [redhat.com] (including new module RPMs etc), and those with yum and apt can very easily test 2.6 using these files.

    Read the readme.txt for full details.

  • 2.6 Kernel issues - Is it really ready? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cronot ( 530669 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @10:01AM (#7567923)

    I've been wanting to run the 2.6 on my Debian-unstable box, but I've been scared off by some of the negative reports I've heard so far. Some of them I've seen on comments from this article [slashdot.org].

    Most notably (for me) is devfs not being actively supported anymore [slashdot.org] (being shifted in favor of udev). That's sad, at least for me, because I've been using devfs since the early versions of the 2.4 kernel, it always worked well for me, and from what I've heard about udev so far, devfs seems like a more elegant and mature solution.

    Then there are problems with USB devices, and others that, being narrowed down, comes down to problems on the APIC interface [slashdot.org]. From what I've heard so far, it doesn't look stable, so why ship it on linux 2.6?

    There's also this problem with Kernel Preemption [kerneltrap.org]. I'm using it on my 2.4, and I don't want to go without it on 2.6. Of course I might just be lucky to no stumble on this problem, but the fact that it can trigger an oops on someone just scares the hell out of me.

    Finally, there's a problem I've experienced myself, but didn't care to report at the time. It's quite old by now (I think it was around version 2.5.65~2.5.70). It has to do with software-raid. I've got a RAID-0 array with 3 SCSI Disks (6gb + 2x4gb = ~14Gb). The disks are old, I know, just like the controller (Adaptec AIC-7xxx). But they work just fine on the 2.4 kernel. So, at the time I decided to give 2.5 a try, just to find out that my array wasn't being detected/mounted. Googled around, found some similar reports and some possible workarounds, but none worked, so I switched back to the 2.4 kernel and haven't touched the development kernels since. It might just be resolved by now, I don't know... Anyway, I will soon replace these disks by a couple of IDEs, with no RAIDing, to save some CPU cycles, so this will not be such a big problem.

    So, anyone care to give me one (or more) reason s to try 2.6 again?

    • Re:2.6 Kernel issues - Is it really ready? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dionysus ( 12737 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @10:42AM (#7568328) Homepage
      Most notably (for me) is devfs not being actively supported anymore (being shifted in favor of udev).

      Well, the reason devfs is not actively supported is because the maintainer disappeared, and nobody has stepped up to take over the code.

      udev seems to solve the problem of only have /dev files that correspond to devices you have connected. But they are moving "back" to the old /dev/sg?1 etc. I much prefer the devfs nameing scheme (what do you do if you have more than 24 hds? The devfs had a solution for that).
    • So do what I will do: run 2.4.x until 2.6.x gets into maintenance and the issues are ironed out. Remember how 2.4.x went? Some of the early versions would trash your hard disk. Now those problems are gone.
    • Well lets see... devfs still works fine, for me anyway. I suspect it'll just probably disappear when they start up 2.7. It is a very nice system, and its a shame to see it go, but what can you do.

      All that APIC stuff is still being ironed out I guess. I only had a problem with that in test7 and test8, but with my archaic hardware (i440BX) I'm thankfully less prone to weirdness then, say, people with VIA or NVidia motherboards.

      I'd never heard of these preemption problems until test10, and I've certainly
    • "Then there are problems with USB devices, and others that, being narrowed down, comes down to problems on the APIC interface [slashdot.org]. From what I've heard so far, it doesn't look stable, so why ship it on linux 2.6?"

      Because a huge number of modern machines *require* ACPI in order to operate properly. my machine at work (Compaq Evo) requires it to reboot properly, my laptop can't be on for more than a few minutes without it, my home-built desktop machine needs it for a few things, etc.

      Distributors
    • If you like devfs so much, why don't you maintain it yourself?
  • Are there any experimental distros with kernel 2.6 and KDE 3.2 already?
    I don't have time to compile everything myself, so it has to be at least a little user friendly ;-)

  • Dear moderators, (Score:5, Insightful)

    by greppling ( 601175 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @12:03PM (#7569216)
    why is it that always people get a +5 Informative when they post a bug report to slashdot instead of sending it to LKML? When Logitech wireless hypersonic ultra XZ763 keyboard isn't working, the responsible maintainer should be informed, but why post it here?

    Those who are interested in such reports should read LKML. Let's keep slashdot for posts of general interest.

    • Not everyone who reads slashdot reads LKML, yet many who read slashdot want to know if the Kernel is buggy before they try it. I'm happy to see bug reports, at least for major bugs.
  • I don't feel like looking for my post in the posting we had here back when 2.6 was announced for testing, but I did predict a release of Dec. 9 (my birthday)... looks like I still have a good shot of winning the bet!
  • 'Course I already used the patch, but it's nice to have it there.


    Now...can anybody tell me the argument to specify aes keysize? -k doesn't seem to work anymore.

  • Does anyone have any information on migrating an existing LVM'ed ext3 filesystem to LVM2 in 2.6? Is there a safe and reliable way to do this?
  • A final test11 version is expected before they sign off on the production version next month.

    Actually, according to kernel.org [kernel.org], linux-2.6.0-test11 was released today.

  • I see no way to get a sane behaviour like in 2.4 from the trackpoint ps/2 device in 2.6. The middle button can not be used to scroll text in X-4.3. It pastes and scrolls at the same time.

    Maybe someone needs to add a dedicated serio driver for trackpoints? I thought IBM was a great linux supporter? What about my desktop now?

  • Ethernet (Score:2)

    by Micah ( 278 )
    My biggest gripe with 2.6 is that when I reboot, ethernet seems to be hosed, and I have to physically power the computer off and on or it just hangs while fetching DHCP info.

    I have a 3C905b. Hope they fix this!

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