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Operating Systems Software Linux

Linux 2.6.0 Kernel Released 837

thenextpresident writes "It's here! Just updated on kernel.org, the Linux 2.6.0 kernel has finally arrived! We've been waiting a long time for this, and it had been rumored it was going to be released tonight. Well, it's here indeed. Happy downloading." There's also a changelog online for this long-awaited update.
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Linux 2.6.0 Kernel Released

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  • HA HAH! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:22PM (#7751029)
    [23:21] http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/18/041820 5&mode=nested&tid=106&tid=185&tid= 190 the sound you just heard was half a million geeks all orgasming at once!
  • I've been (Score:4, Informative)

    by asit+ler ( 688945 ) * <asittler@bUUUrad-x.com minus threevowels> on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:22PM (#7751030)
    I've been using 2.6.0-test11 for some time now, and find it quite stable and satisfactory.

    Seems this fixes a few bugs, and beefs up Wireless support. Sweet. Can't wait till we start seeing this in "production systems".
  • by thenextpresident ( 559469 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:23PM (#7751050) Homepage Journal
    Wow, Lord of the Rings and 2.6 Kernel released on the same day? This just shows the dedication the Linux developers have. To not go see the movie and to work to release the kernel. My hats are off to these guys. They have gone above and beyond the call of duty.
  • by algeliten ( 733634 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:23PM (#7751051)

    Got a torrent of it for ya'll:

    Linux 2.6.0 final (tar.bz2) [alge.nlc.no]
  • sco (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:23PM (#7751054)
    My god. Now SCO will have to update all of their lawsuits!

  • by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:24PM (#7751066) Journal
    I just started downloading this about 5 minutes ago and went from 174k/sec down to 12k and still falling.

    At least offer a bitorrent version for those suffering the wrath of the slashdot effect.

    If only the latest vanilla sources of gentoo linux were stable. I would not need to download 2.6 in order to get the nvidia opengl drivers to work.

  • by cookie_cutter ( 533841 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:24PM (#7751071)
    I'm not trolling, I honestly want to know.

    I run linux as my desktop at home, and I also run it at work in a scientific computing cluster.

    I'd like to know what benefits I could expect from the new kernel in each area in which I use linux.

    • by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:31PM (#7751137) Journal
      Its really the first industrial strength version to compete agaisnt the big Unixies like Solaris and Aix. Full 64-bit support for the newer Opterons, full G5 support for the new powermacs, access to files that are up to 2 terribytes in size on 64 bit platforms with much better async i/o, support for up to 32-64 processors with advanced Numa!! The virtual memory has been improved and this version is a database server powerhouse.

      For a desktop, real time support. Low latencies, improved USB and Firewire device support, better i/o and less race conditions during heavy disk use. It just feels alot faster and performs much better.

      Its a big upgrade with mostly server oriented features but it should be a nicer desktop OS and it can perform better under loads for your scientific computing cluster.

      But remember do not install it if you do not have a real up to date distro! Module tools have been upgraded and are incompatible with older versions. You can wreck your system if your not carefull.

    • by ameoba ( 173803 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:31PM (#7751142)
      If you put a .0 kernel on your cluster at work, expect to lose your grants and your job.
    • by xwred1 ( 207269 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:34PM (#7751171) Homepage
      This [kniggit.net] is a good summary from a high level.
    • by Kourino ( 206616 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:35PM (#7751181) Homepage
      Read Dave Jones' post halloween document [linux.org.uk]. It summarizes the differences between 2.4 and 2.6.
    • by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:36PM (#7751188) Homepage
      Try the first paragraph of this story [kerneltrap.org] for a bunch of technical links. Or this one from Linuxworld [linuxworld.com] for a more introductory overview.

      But probably what you really want is Joseph Pranevich's Wonderful World of Linux 2.6 [kniggit.net].
    • by $ASANY ( 705279 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @12:04AM (#7751391) Homepage
      In your home desktop, you should notice a bit better performace with your desktop since there's some new locking mechanisms, better threading and of course support for additional hardware/ALSA changes, etc..

      Your cluster is going to ROCK, though, with kernel async I/O, better management of large memory, greater SMP scalability, hyperthreading and a bunch of other things. Databases are going to see huge improvements.

      You WILL be pleased. I promise.

    • by nathanh ( 1214 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @01:11AM (#7751741) Homepage
      I run linux as my desktop at home, and I also run it at work in a scientific computing cluster.

      I'd like to know what benefits I could expect from the new kernel in each area in which I use linux.

      Desktop users will benefit from significantly faster and less "jerky" performance.

      New sound (ALSA) and video (V4L2) subsystems with improved features and performance.

      Much better USB and Firewire support.

      Increased hardware support, especially in the areas of bluetooth and wireless.

      Under-the-hood changes (threads, reentrancy, preemptiveness, scheduler, block I/O) means your applications should all run a bit faster.

      Your scientific cluster applications probably won't see any benefit unless you're hitting hard limits on memory capacity or network performance. In my experience, scientific applications are all CPU bound anyway and could be running on DOS for all it matters.

      More accurate information at Wonderful World of Linux 2.6 [kniggit.net].

  • PayPal (Score:5, Funny)

    by IGnatius T Foobar ( 4328 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:24PM (#7751072) Homepage Journal
    Since it's impossible to track global downloads of the Linux 2.6.0 kernel, The SCO Group has set up a PayPal tip jar. Please abide by the honor system and send them your $699 after downloading the new kernel.
  • by potpie ( 706881 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:26PM (#7751086) Journal
    I'm glad the new kernel is out in time for the holiday season... wait... that's sad isn't it?
  • by cuiousyellow ( 89995 ) <`grant' `at' `jokerbone.com'> on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:27PM (#7751097) Homepage
    But I just upgraded to 2.4.21!

    Redhat is on version 9 wtf?

    So uh, what is new in this version?

    $foo_obscure_driver doesn't work I'll never use Linux again!

    Now I can finally switch from windows!

    $bar_obscure_feature which I can't live without never made it in, I hate Linux.

    but I *liked* make menuconfig; make clean && make modules modules_install bzimage!!
    • by chunkwhite86 ( 593696 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:50PM (#7751309)
      but I *liked* make menuconfig; make clean && make modules modules_install bzimage!!

      Excuse my ignorance (I'm not familar with the new 2.6 build system) but I really *did* like the make menuconfig approach. It's been that way since way-back-when so I could probably do it blindfolded. In addition, make menuconfig is great for building a new kernel over a slow (e.g. dial-up) ssh session. I actually rebuilt the kernel on my PC in Virginia from a cyber-cafe in Paris once.
      • by shellbeach ( 610559 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @12:45AM (#7751620)
        Don't worry, make menuconfig is still there - I use it for every build. The poster was (presumably) talking about the rest of the process, which is now a bit simpler:

        [make mrproper]; make menuconfig; make; make modules_install

        But it doesn't really make much difference ... (pardon the pun :)
  • by Devil's Avocado ( 73913 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:31PM (#7751138)
    This is great news! I'm excited even though I'm now an OS X dude. Once I find the time to back up my system and repartition I'll be trying LinuxPPC. Speaking of which, if anybody knows of (or wants to write) a non-destructive repartitioning tool for OS X please let me know!

    -DA
  • by Kourino ( 206616 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:31PM (#7751148) Homepage
    For a summary of changes from 2.4 to 2.6, read Dave Jones' "post-Halloween" document [linux.org.uk]. (The Changelog only lists changes from -test11 to 2.6.0 and so is not very useful. However, a full Changelog from 2.5.0 to 2.6.0 would be massive information overload, as well as just not terribly useful for a broad picture of what's different.)
  • by state*less ( 246807 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:35PM (#7751176)
    nvidia users might want to download the proper patches before trying out 2.6. the patches can be foundhere [minion.de]

    the start of something [p2ptrades.com]?
  • by Shanes ( 141586 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:35PM (#7751183)
    Here [iu.edu]
  • 2.4 to 2.6 (Score:5, Informative)

    by GustavoT ( 732121 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:36PM (#7751191)
    For those of us upgrading from 2.4 to 2.6 and don't know where to begin, you may want to check out an upgrade guide [kerneltrap.org].

    It's small but very helpful for someone that doesn't completely know what they're doing.
  • by Stevyn ( 691306 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:38PM (#7751204)
    I mean I went there but there's no trusted computing logo. How can I trust software if it doesn't say I should. Linux will never be ready for the desktop until it's part of a trusted computing initiative.
  • by billatq ( 544019 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:45PM (#7751260)
    I'm sitting on top of a decently fast link and I'm leaving tomorrow, so I suppose this mirror couldn't hurt: linux-2.6.0.tar.bz2 [tamu.edu].
  • by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:51PM (#7751316)
    Congrats to all the people who worked hard on 2.6. I will be a happy user I am sure.

    Its great to see this go out in 2003, capping off a stellar year for open source. Mozilla 1.4/5, Gnome 2.4, KDE 3.2 (almost), Apache 2.x...and countless other pieces of the puzzle coming together in an awesome ecosystem.

    Corporations haven't just 'taken notice', they are actively pushing this stuff. They are amping up great services behind the new commodity - software.

    RedHat and IBM and Novell are leading the charge from the .com side while a huge developer community has taken root in the volunteer ranks.

    2.6 was the icing on the cake - the version that really challenges the most established kernels across the entire spectrum. BRAVO!!

  • by IntelliTubbie ( 29947 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:53PM (#7751326)
    Why is an insignificant little dot-release suddenly front page "news" around here? C'mon, guys, this isn't Freshmeat [freshmeat.net].

    Cheers,
    IT
    • by joshua42 ( 103889 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @02:02AM (#7751972)
      You do however have a point, I think. Microsoft has been mocked about their inflated version numbering scheme. Linux is doing just the opposite. The convention for software X.Y.Z is:

      X - major release
      Y - incremental release with additional features
      Z - release featuring only bugfixes

      Had Linux adopted that system we would not have had the pointless 2.6 vs. 3.0 discussion on when changes are "big enough".

      Major releases equals major numbers, simple. It is not like we will be running out of numbers by using up a new major one every two years or so.
  • For end users (Score:5, Interesting)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @11:57PM (#7751349) Homepage Journal
    In related news, Redhat/Fedora has announced [redhat.com] that the next Fedora release will ship with 2.6. They've called it a "stop-ship" feature :) Fedora Core 2 is tentatively scheduled to be released in April 04.
  • by brandonY ( 575282 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @12:04AM (#7751394)
    My preciousssssssssss...My precioussssssss 2.6...

    SCOses can't haveses our precioussssssssssss kernel....
  • by vwjeff ( 709903 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @12:08AM (#7751418)
    do I have to send $699 to SCO if I already paid. I think this is a legitimate question that must be answered asap. I'm sure SCO will let us all know after the DDos has stopped against their network.
  • by An Onerous Coward ( 222037 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @12:13AM (#7751449) Homepage
    Look at the evidence from the Changelog:

    mdharm-usb@one-eyed-alien.net
    trini@kernel.cras hing.org
    jes@trained-monkey.org
    James_McMechan@h otmail.com

    Now ask yourself, do you want a patch submitted by someone at "one-eyed-alien.net" running on *your* production server? Can we really trust patches submitted by people using Hotmail accounts?

    Go back to Windows, and rest assured that every developer will be using a trusted microsoft.com e-mail address. Don't you feel safer already?
  • Steps Back (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thebatlab ( 468898 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @12:19AM (#7751472)
    From the following Cnet article:
    http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5127627.html?tag=n efd_top [com.com]

    All these quotes apparently came from Mr. Morton himself.

    "...the part of 2.6 that communicates with memory is less efficient, imposing a practical limit of 24GB of memory to the 32GB that 2.4 could handle. However, he believes that programmers will address the problem."

    Is this reduced limit useful? Why should it be up to programmers to code around? Did I miss something?

    "The new kernel also monitors for new events more frequently--1,000 times per second instead of 100--a fact that slows down the system about 1 percent..."

    I assume it's to try and respond to events faster but increasing it tenfold, isn't that overkill? I mean, it slows the system down by 1% which isn't horrible and if a real-time app has a problem with it, you can always modify the kernel yourself but couldn't they have upped the polling to 250 which is a decent increase but not a 10x one.

    "In addition, 2.6 requires somewhat more memory to run and shows worse performance when it has to use hard drives as extra memory under heavy loads... "

    That seems reasonable that it needs a bit more memory but why should it see adverse effects under heavy loads as compared to the 2.4 kernel? Shouldn't they degrade at around the same level or are there some new file system issues that cause this?

    Enlighten me.
    • by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @01:36AM (#7751850) Homepage
      "The new kernel also monitors for new events more frequently--1,000 times per second instead of 100--a fact that slows down the system about 1 percent..."

      I assume it's to try and respond to events faster but increasing it tenfold, isn't that overkill? I mean, it slows the system down by 1% which isn't horrible and if a real-time app has a problem with it, you can always modify the kernel yourself but couldn't they have upped the polling to 250 which is a decent increase but not a 10x one.


      Polling 100 times a second has been the standard figure in the Linux kernel for a long long time. Meanwhile, the top CPU speed has increased by much more than one order of magnitude (say 300MHz -> 3GHz). Most desktop distributions have already been shipping with this set to 1000 already, since it makes the machine overall more responsive, something that's particularly important for a GUI.

      I'm guessing that on a top-of-the line server pushing bits to this disk here, that NIC there at very high speeds, it'd be just as good as the old setting, keeping buffers flowing. That 1% quote is completely without context, and might be true on a really low-end machine where 1000 context switches takes up a lot of CPU time, but overall I don't think that's accurate.

      Edit: I found this quote on a google search:
      "I don't know what the costs of a higher HZ value might be, except for the obvious one: more cpu cycles will be spent servicing the timer interrupt. On my PPro, servicing the timer interrupt takes around 1500 cycles, so with HZ = 100 this accounts for fraction of a percent of the processor's time. With HZ = 1024, this still wouldn't be much more than one percent (I expect the figures to be similar for a K6)." So that figure might be accurate for a 150MHz Pentium Pro...

      If you're running an embedded system or something else on limited hardware, you'd probably want to tweak that now, but then again you probably should have tweaked a lot of kernel settings in the past as well. So nothing new here, just staying with the times. Hell, on a GUI machine I'd consider experimenting with setting it even higher.

      Kjella
  • by Newtonian_p ( 412461 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @01:13AM (#7751749) Homepage
    I just finished downloading 2.6.0-test11 1.5 hours ago and then I see this. Anyhow, I downloaded the path test11->final, recompiled, and rebooted:
    Linux boxor 2.6.0 #3 Wed Dec 17 23:53:09 EST 2003 i686 unknown unknown GNU/Linux

    My Radeon binary drivers wouldn't work at first with it on my nforce2 motherboard but I've just found patches in Gentoo's portage tree. I'm currentely running Linux 2.6.0 final on an nforce2 computer with hw 3d acceleration enabled on my Radeon 9600 pro!
  • by idiot900 ( 166952 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @01:22AM (#7751783)
    Should kernel.org be slow for you, use a mirror, such as this one. [wustl.edu]
  • by f-matic ( 643215 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @01:44AM (#7751888) Homepage
    Just finished getting 2.6.0 compiled and installed on a Debian sid box with only a few hassles to get everything running smoothly... Here's some notes from the install - old news for those running 2.6 test kernels but figured someone may be interested:

    -make xconfig looks really professional now
    -make / make modules / make modules_install has all been tidied up by the looks of it -- no more endless printout of GCC syntax. had me worried for a second that nothing was compiling but overall looks pretty slick
    -alsa comes installed as default, but the configuration seems a little screwy (on debian at least) -- /etc/modules.conf contains only OSS aliases, no alsa config files at all. so no sound at the moment...
    -usb mouse doesn't seem to work here when compiled in the kernel, but works fine as a module -- same problem i've had with 2.4.18-23
    -the nvidia 2.6.0 patch available at minion.de [minion.de] works great, so i have a functional X11 server with nvidia modules

    The only thing I can find to fault is that somehow the X11 server on the backup 2.4.23 kernel crashes on bootup due to some problem parsing the XF86Config-4 file. I'm not sure if this is a side-effect of the 2.6.0 install or something else (maybe some apt-get update X11 changes i missed?), and i've had the occasional problem before with older kernels becoming only partly functional after newer kernels are installed.

    All around though, nice job! Compiling the kernel is getting easier and nicer to look at. And it seems the problems with mouse lagging during 100% CPU usage are gone, at least as far as I've tried it this evening.

    Thanks to Linus and all that contributed..

  • by woods ( 17108 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @02:49AM (#7752134) Homepage

    You might want to keep an eye on your 2.6.0 machine if it's on a network that's readily accessible to the outside world. Apparently not all of the security fixes that occurred in the 2.4 line have made it into 2.6.0.

    Dave Jones' post halloween document [linux.org.uk], which is mentioned in an earlier post as a good summary of changes, mentions the following (near the bottom):

    Security concerns.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Several security issues solved in 2.4 may not yet be forward ported
    to 2.6. For this reason 2.6.x kernels should not be tested on
    untrusted systems. Testing known 2.4 exploits and reporting results
    is useful.

  • by Monster Zero ( 58806 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @03:17AM (#7752223) Homepage
    I have been following the development of the 2.6 kernel for some time now, and I have been tracking the enhancements that seem most important to me for our 130 proc Beowulf cluster:
    • 2.6 offers you the ability to configure the way core files are named through a /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern file.

    • Since Linux 2.5.1 it is possible to atomically move a subtree to another place. The usage is...
      mount --move olddir newdir
    • Since 2.5.43, dmask=value sets the umask applied to directories only. The default is the umask of the current process. The fmask=value sets the umask applied to regular files only. Again, the default is the umask of the current process.
    • Directories can now be marked as synchronous using chattr +S, so that all changes will be immediately written to disk. Note, this does not guarantee atomicity, at least not for all filesystems and for all operations. You *can* be guaranteed that system calls will not return until the changes are on disk; note though that this does have has some significant performance impacts.

      EXT3:

    • The ext3 filesystem has gained indexed directory support, which offers considerable performance gains when used on filesystems with directories containing large numbers of files.
    • In order to use the htree feature, you need at least version 1.32 of e2fsprogs.
    • Existing filesystems can be converted using the command
      tune2fs -O dir_index /dev/hdXXX
    • The latest e2fsprogs can be found at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/e2fsprogs

      http://xenotime.net/linux/doc/network-interface-na mes.txt

    • The ext2 and ext3 filesystems have new file allocations policies (the "Orlov allocator") which will place subdirectories closer together on-disk. This tends to mean that operations which touch many files in a directory tree are much faster if that tree was created under a 2.6 kernel.

      NFS:

    • Basic support has been added for NFSv4 (server and client)
    • Additionally, kNFSD now supports transport over TCP. This experimental feature is also backported to 2.4.20

      Profiling:

    • A system wide performance profiler (Oprofile) has been included in 2.6. With this option compiled in, you'll get an oprofilefs filesystem which you can mount, that the userspace utilities talk to. You can find out more at http://oprofile.sf.net/
    • You need a fixed readprofile utility for 2.6. Present in util-linux as of 2.11z

      CPU frequency scaling:

    • Certain processors have the facility to scale their voltage/clockspeed. 2.6 introduces an interface to this feature, see Documentation/cpufreq for more information. This functionality also covers features like Intel's speedstep, and the Powernow! feature present in mobile AMD Athlons. In addition to x86 variants, this framework also supports various ARM CPUs. You can find a userspace daemon that monitors battery life and adjusts accordingly at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cpufreqd

      LVM2 - DeviceMapper:

    • The LVM1 code was removed wholesale, and replaced with a much better designed 'device mapper'.
    • This is backwards compatible with the LVM1 disk format.
    • Device mapper does require new tools to manage volumes however. You can get these from ftp://ftp.sistina.com/pub/LVM2/tools/

      From http://www.kniggit.net/wwol26.html:

    • The number of unique users and groups on a Linux system has been bumped from 65,000 to over 4 billion. (16-bit to 32-bit), making Linux more practical on large file and authentication servers. Similarly, The number of PIDs (Process IDs) before wraparound has been bumped up from 32,000 to 1 billion, improving application starting performance on very busy or very long-lived systems. Although the maximum number of open files has not been increased, Linux with the 2.6 kernel will no longer require you to set what the limit is in advance; this number will self-scale. And finally, Linux 2.6 will include improved 64-bit support on block devices that support it, even on 32-bit platforms such as i386. This allows for filesystems up to 16TB on common hardware.
  • Happy downloading. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kasperd ( 592156 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @04:11AM (#7752380) Homepage Journal
    Hope you know, what you are doing to poor litle server. I'm surprised I made it to the frontpage, and this is what it had to say:
    Up since: Wed Apr 16 13:06:45 2003
    Load Average: 27.65 27.49 27.00 (1470 processes)
    Ram: 5950784KB
    Free: 6800KB
    Current bandwidth utilization 269.44 Mbit/s
    That's impressive 108% of the bandwidth is now in use.
  • by poing ( 85452 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @04:22AM (#7752414)
    Does anybody have a howto on how I can migrate my LVM version 1.0.7 volumes from 2.4.23 to 2.6.0? I know LVM has been replaced by device-mapper. Do I have to run some kind of conversion tool, or will device mapper just magically find and activate my LVMs? I can't find any information on this.
  • by Anonymous Bullard ( 62082 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @04:25AM (#7752421) Homepage
    From: Andrew Morton (xxxx@osdl.org) [iu.edu]
    Date: Thu Dec 18 2003 - 00:15:50 EST

    ---cut---
    Desktops and laptops may have more trouble at this time because of the much wider range of hardware and because of as-yet unimplemented fixes for the hardware and BIOS bugs from which these machines tend to suffer.

    During the 2.6.0 stabilization period a significant number of less serious fixes have accumulated in various auxiliary kernel trees and these shall be merged into the 2.6 stream after the 2.6.0 release. Many of these fixes appear in Andrew Morton's "-mm" tree (...)
    ---cut---

  • Odd... (Score:5, Funny)

    by FrostedWheat ( 172733 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @06:06AM (#7752699)
    but my point is that the quality of bugs has been pretty high lately - Linus

    We have bugs... but at least they are *high quality* bugs! Take that Microsoft ;)

    (Congrats to all the developers for 2.6! Looking forward to getting rid of OSS and ide-scsi!)
  • by alannon ( 54117 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @06:29AM (#7752778)
    The biggest bonus I got from 2.6 was DMA with ATAPI commands finally works. Earlier kernels would not use DMA for ATAPI commands (read: CD/DVD burning commands) even if DMA was enabled for the IDE device. This effectively limited CD burning to the speed that PIO would work at, which was about 12x on my 900Mhz K7. It also ate up your entire CPU.

    With 2.6, DMA works properly with ATAPI commands, at least when using the new ATAPI virtual SCSI bus (NOT the ide-scsi module!). To use the new virtual bus, use 'dev=ATAPI:0,0,0' in a cdrecord command. You may also need to use the latest alpha of cdrecord.

    I can now burn 2 CDs at once (multiple burners), at 52x without my CPU load going over 0.2!

    Of course, if you had the luxury of using REAL SCSI CD burners before, this won't make a lick of difference to you. :)

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