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Linux 2.6.5 is Released 315

Posted by CmdrTaco from the get-your-diff-on dept.
lamont116 writes "Featuring a 367.6 KB changelog, the next Linux kernel is now ready for action. As always, enjoy!"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Linux 2.6.5 is Released More

Linux 2.6.5 is Released

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  • With all the Spam problems going on these days, you would think that the Linux changelog would not publish email addys. Why should someone have to display their email addy to work on Linux? To me it seems very counter-productive, and it may shed light as to why Linux users wish to stop Spam, instead of simply becoming inaccessible to it. I've thought about working on Linux before, but this is the only thing stopping me as it stands.
    • Er... so you can be contacted if there is a problem with your code? Don't use your primary email address, dumbass.

      • Re:Linux Changelog Email Publishing (Score:4, Insightful)

        by dolo666 ( 195584 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @09:36AM (#8761146) Journal
        > Er... so you can be contacted if there is a problem with your code? Don't use your primary email address, dumbass.

        You would think that the people developing the best project in the world would at least have the knowledge of how to become inaccessible to spam. There are billions of other ways to be contacted. How about a form that lets you email each user on the project? That would only take about a day to code and a few to perfect. So I'm not a dumbass (thank you very much) You, however, might be.
    • It's only a problem because people post the damn thing to Slashdot, really. I mean, all these people already get spam because they post to LKML, so having the slight added exposure in the Changelog probably really isn't a big deal compared to that.

      (Actually, the last time I posted to LKML, I didn't get spam, so the stated problem may be even less than you might think.)

    • Re:Linux Changelog Email Publishing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Temporal ( 96070 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @09:40AM (#8761169) Journal
      I've had my e-mail address listed all over the place for several years (Google [google.com]), and my mail server performs absolutely no filtering.

      I spend about 30 seconds a day deleting my spam.

      If this is stopping you from working on Linux, you must not be very interested.
      • Your only friends and family must not use windows/outlook/msie then. I get tons of spam, mainly because of people I know getting infected with windows viruses (and I'm in their address books).
    • Well, most of linux developers use the same adress than in linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org. It's a 3000+ subscribers list, so spammers know about it. Just try creating a new account and post to the list, spammers will catch you. The fact that it shows in the changelog is really minor. I guess that most of linux developers are just tired of spam and they already configured their spam filters. Same goes for any OSS proyect. I can't see how you won't contribute because of something that can happen anyway regardle

  • Performance... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Denny ( 2963 ) <slashdot.denny@me> on Sunday April 04, 2004 @09:32AM (#8761134) Homepage Journal
    I saw a fairly good set of benchmarks a couple of days ago showing that the 2.6.x series is doing a lot better than 2.4.x as a SQL server and as a fileserver, with minimal losses in some other areas. It looked pretty impressive for something that's still on fairly early versions, so I was planning on swapping over this weekend... although I guess I'll wait for the Debian package to update to .5 now.

  • Wahoo (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04, 2004 @09:33AM (#8761136)
    Add support for scroll wheel on MS Office and similar keyboards.
    This is excellent news... I've been hoping for this for a while.

  • the PPC64 work is looking real nice (Score:5, Interesting)

    by phoxix ( 161744 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @09:36AM (#8761147)
    40+ patches, ouch :)

    One day PPC64 will be just as common as AMD64 in the server room ...

    Sunny Dubey

    • Re:the PPC64 work is looking real nice (Score:5, Informative)

      by zdzichu ( 100333 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @11:26AM (#8761545) Homepage Journal
      PPC64 will generally get more attention now, since Linus' main workstation is PPC64 since about two months now.
      • Anybody know why? Does he --or anybody at IBM-- see a future for PPC64 and Linux as a desktop contender?

        This [theinquirer.net] is why I ask.

        And with IBM's recent "open" hardware initiative for PowerPC, things are looking tantalizing: Open OS and Open hardware.
    • I'm particularly happy that they fixed the PPC threaded core dump bug - if your threaded app dumped core, it oopsed the kernel on PPC, not good! Seems to work fine now:-)

  • New Kernel (Score:4, Funny)

    by The_Ace666 ( 755363 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @09:37AM (#8761151)
    I love the smell of a new kernel in the morning.

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Alsa with Intel8x0 ? (Score:4, Informative)

      by cheesybagel ( 670288 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @09:57AM (#8761219)
      NForce card here, using the 2.6.3 kernel from Fedora 2 test 2. I do get freaky sample rates from the drivers ocasionally and everything plays speeded up or down, but "Sound & Video -> Volume Control" works well. The problem is the PCM volume by default is 0 and if that is 0, the master volume control doesn't do anything.

    • Re:Alsa with Intel8x0 ? (Score:5, Informative)

      by FyRE666 ( 263011 ) * on Sunday April 04, 2004 @10:03AM (#8761241) Homepage
      I've seen a lot of Intel8x0 fixes in the changelog...
      You don't have to upgrade your kernel to install the latest ALSA drivers. Just download the source from the ALSA site [alsa-project.org], build and install it. I never use the ALSA drivers in the 2.6.x kernels (they never seem to work correctly for me, if at all). I never have problems with the official source versions though.

      BTW, if your card is working ok with OSS emulation, what's the problem?
    • Am I the only one with a Nforce2/Intel8x0 soundcar who cannot change the volume and must use OSS emulation for all applications since direct alsa doesn't work ? (2.6.3 kernel)

      I have to use OSS instead of ALSA because my Line-In quits working with ALSA.
    • No, you're not alone. I have an AN7 and neither the Alsa kernel modules nor the Alsa 1.0.3 package works.

      OSS does work but I get a whopping 2-channels on a 5.1 setup.

      I'm going to buy a seperate soundcard, personally, and shy away from everything onboard motherboards unless I know for a fact that they are well supported. This is first and foremost my fault for not researching Linux compatability before buying a motherboard. However, it is also Nvidia's fault for using binary drivers and not keeping them up
    • I use an Intel8x0 integrated card with 2.6.3, and Alsa works relatively well. Every once in a while my SPDIF output gets muted somehow, but other than that it's pretty smooth.
    • They broke something in ALSA going to 2.6.3 and haven't managed to fix it yet. I tried 2.6.5 last night to check, and it doesn't cause lockups anymore but there's still no volume. Wait and see I guess.

  • Instructions for 2.4 to 2.6 upgrades for Luddites? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JessLeah ( 625838 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @09:38AM (#8761160)
    Luddites like me might like to try 2.6, if only we had some guidance. I still run Debian Stable (yes, Stable) since I don't trust Unstable or Testing not to muck up my system.

    Anyone got upgrade instructions for Debian 3.0, or other 'old' distros? Believe it or not, not everyone wants to be on the 'bleeding edge' in all areas. Nevertheless, to be able to try new kernels would be nice.

  • Where can i browse online through the source? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Probably a stupid question as everyone except me knows where this is possible, well nevertheless...

    is there a site where i can just browse through the sources without downloading them?

  • Stable? (Score:4, Informative)

    by hanssprudel ( 323035 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @09:43AM (#8761175)
    I love the speed increases that the 2.6 kernel has achieved on the desktop (and for things like media: mplayer never bugs out with that charming "YOUR COMPUTER IS TOO SLOW" message anymore). However, I don't know if it can be considered even remotely stable. Since switching, my uptime has been a Windows like joke.

    For example:

    - The conversion to ALSA works great, but the modules for OSS compatibility segfault whenever an app tries to use them. Segfaults in the kernel are fun! There is pretty much nothing to do but reboot after that.

    - Firewire and sbp2 support is completely broken. Ironically this has, I believe, more from "experimental" in 2.4 to a normal feature, yet it worked fine before and now doesn't work at all (the linux1394 forums forums reflect that I am not alone in this). Trying to copy data to sbp2 drives segfaults, hangs, and worse. Beware of connecting to 2.6 if you have a firewire drive with data you hold dear...

    I'm sure there is more, but I am forced to return to the land of 2.4 most of the time. Now, I'm not complaining about the quality: if I want working 1394 drivers I ought to write some or shut up about it, but I am questioning to what extent 2.6 should have been released, if even after four releases basic things are completely broken...

    • Re:Stable? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kourino ( 206616 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @09:51AM (#8761200) Homepage
      If you're having problems, please read capture any oops output the kernel gives and submit a bug report. Kernel developers won't know about problems you have on your hardware if you don't tell them :3 Reporting bugs is as important as actually writing the drivers.

      (I, for one, use snd-pcm-oss with gstreamer all the time without issues, so the ALSA people would definitely be interested in a bug report from you. No clue about the ieee1394 issues; obviously it works for someone, though, or it wouldn't have been released without being marked EXPERIMENTAL.)

    • Re:Stable? (Score:5, Informative)

      by l-ascorbic ( 200822 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @10:19AM (#8761299)
      Funny, I never managed to get 1394 working until I did move to 2.6. It didn't work at first, but disabling eth1394 got sbp2 working. I can now use my Mac, HFS+ formatted iPod with gtkpod. I never got HFS+ working with 2.4. On the other hand, I haven't managed to get ALSA working at all yet. The biggest problem I had with the upgrade was with USB (for my mouse). In the end I dumped uhci in favour of usbmouse. This is all with a VIA Epia-M Mini-ITX board.

    • Firewire problems. (Score:2, Informative)

      by ijuma82 ( 224636 )
      I had some issues with firewire in kernel 2.6 (getting total lockups when under heavy activity). I solved them by using the latest code in the subversion tree of http://www.linux1394.org/ with kernel 2.6.5-rc2. Since then I have upgraded to 2.6.5-rc3 and now 2.6.5 without any problems.

      So, my advice is, try the latest kernel with the latest subversion tree from the linux1394.org website. Hopefully, that will solve your problems. 8)

    • Re:Stable? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Cthefuture ( 665326 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @10:39AM (#8761377)
      Haha, in the past I've been very vocal about how sucky the sbp2/1394 drivers are. They have never worked right from the very first version.

      However, as of 2.6.3 or so they actually started working mostly normally for me. It detects all the drives and I don't have to go through the whole disconnect/reconnect routine every time I boot up. I haven't had any time-out errors like what used to plague the system. Not to say that is fixed, I haven't tried a full fschk on a large ext2 drive recently. That used to always fail with timeout errors and would completely bork the drive.

      Interesting that other people are now having problems. All version previous to 2.6.3 were a huge pain in the ass for me to use.

      So I guess I can continue my rant on how Ben Collins doesn't seem like a very good programmer (or he has too much on his plate or something). I wish someone with more time (or more talented) would once and for all fix the damn 1394/sbp2 system.

      Now, I'm not complaining about the quality: if I want working 1394 drivers I ought to write some or shut up about it ...

      Well it depends. I'm sure as usual I'll catch more flak for saying the drivers suck and that I should write them myself. However, I just don't have time to learn all those subsystems. Nor do I want to use precious brain power on commodity items like that. Drivers should "just work", I don't care how they work. Remember, that's just my personal desires. I like application programming and I'm good at it because I'm dedicated to it (just like drivers writers like doing their thing).

      The reason I think complaining is OK is because I don't think you should write software if it's going to be half-assed. Even if it's free/volunteer work. Because if you do, it might keep someone else that wouldn't do a half-assed job from working on it. They think you're taking care of it or "it works good enough" and it just sits there and rots while you diddle around.
    • I do think, though, that whatever its problems, the early 2.6 series is in much better shape than the early 2.4 series was (remember that?). Of course, 2.6 has been nothing but stable for me, or I might think differently :).

      Daniel

    • Always drivers... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by r6144 ( 544027 ) <r6k&sohu,com> on Sunday April 04, 2004 @11:28AM (#8761554) Homepage Journal
      Well, I'm running 2.6.x on two of my machines now, and they are running mostly perfectly (user-mode-linux doesn't work well for me yet, as of 2.6.3). Anyway I did have a (very old) machine in which 2.4 kernels fails to detect the network card correctly even after tons of isapnp tweakings, so I had to downgrade the kernel to 2.2 after upgrading RH7.0 to RH7.3.

      Such things depends mostly on luck, since obviously it is the drivers that are problematic, and some hardware are owned by few kernel hackers, so hard-to-fix kinds of bugs in them can take much time to fix, while it is reasonable of Linus et al to start flagging the kernel as "stable" if it works on 50~75% of the machines.

      It seems that there are more hardware companies than excellent kernel hackers for many operating systems (maybe even Windows), so driver quality will always be a problem on any OS for a long time to go...

    • This behavior sounds like your kenrel is being miscompiled, or the kenrel you're using is buggy. What kernel are you using? If you compiled it yourself, did you change anything? What compiler?

    • Re:Stable? (Score:5, Informative)

      by slamb ( 119285 ) * on Sunday April 04, 2004 @02:37PM (#8762550) Homepage

      I love the speed increases that the 2.6 kernel has achieved on the desktop (and for things like media: mplayer never bugs out with that charming "YOUR COMPUTER IS TOO SLOW" message anymore). However, I don't know if it can be considered even remotely stable. Since switching, my uptime has been a Windows like joke.

      [...]

      - Firewire and sbp2 support is completely broken. Ironically this has, I believe, more from "experimental" in 2.4 to a normal feature, yet it worked fine before and now doesn't work at all (the linux1394 forums forums reflect that I am not alone in this). Trying to copy data to sbp2 drives segfaults, hangs, and worse. Beware of connecting to 2.6 if you have a firewire drive with data you hold dear...

      It's important to keep some perspective. Usually whenever anyone says something is full of bugs, they mean that they keep running into the same bug over and over. If you're having problems with Firewire, very likely you're running into one bug in your driver repeatedly. The other people complaining may have the same chipset and the same problem.

      My point is that you can't make any generalizations to the entire kernel series (or even subsystem, like 1394) being more or less stable just because you encounter a single bug that you didn't used to. Look more closely at the oopses and your system logs, see where it's happening, file a good bug report. They'll probably have it fixed in a couple releases.

      People use "stable" or "unstable" to mean a lot of different things:

      1. If they're changing the APIs constantly or not.
      2. If the core of the system doesn't crash and performs well under a variety of loads
      3. If their system doesn't crash and performs well under their load

      ...and #3 really needs to be qualified with "for me" or "with this exact hardware, doing this". Because otherwise, you're saying the whole series sucks because of a single bug. And very likely, a bug in a driver. When I read kernel traffic [kerneltraffic.org], lwn [lwn.net], or kernel trap [kerneltrap.org], I frequently see mention of fixing some unsafe coding practice...in the core kernel. Drivers are left for their maintainers to update. Some do so quickly and well. Some don't.

      Ideally, a system would be so rock-solid that you would never run into even one stability or performance bug. But I don't think that's much more realistic for Linux 2.4 than it is for 2.6.

      (This message is not just aimed at you. I see this a lot.)

  • 802.11g support (Score:5, Informative)

    by egrinake ( 308662 ) <`erikg' `at' `codepoet.no'> on Sunday April 04, 2004 @09:48AM (#8761190)
    Drivers for the prism54 [prism54.org] chipset have finally been merged, which means that the vanilla kernel now has support for 802.11g (54 mbit) wireless lan. The prism54 chipset is used in whole bunch [prism54.org] of 802.11g cards.
  • [alansmithee@deke.at]
    [PATCH] fix the disgronification build again after subarch memory breakage
    The patch to check "disgronif=N" early broke by putting memdef (a variable which is only exported by subparse.c) into parse_memory_region_early().

    Finally! I have been having so much trouble with the MIPS port because of a memory leak from the improper disgronification check since 2.6.3. This is a very crucial patch. Way to go!

  • Installation? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by black mariah ( 654971 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @09:50AM (#8761195)
    Does anyone have links to some articles that details kernel upgrades that aren't written by and for programmers? I really want to update my Fedora box to 2.6, but the documentation I've seen for installing a new kernel pretty much assumes it's something you've done before.

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

      by Pros_n_Cons ( 535669 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @10:00AM (#8761231)
      http://fedora.artoo.net/faq/#Kernel26 Or upgrade to FC2 test 2 like I did to help squash out bugs.
      • Thank you! Cheers! Generic comment of gratitude! I'm going to wait for the next stable release of FC before I upgrade. I had some problems moving from Redhat 8 to FC1, and if I run into those again I want to be prepared... so there's a lot of backing up coming my way in the next month or so.

    • Re:Installation? (Score:5, Informative)

      by qtp ( 461286 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @10:29AM (#8761344) Journal
      I'm not a RedHat user, but I did find this document [redhat.com] for building a custom kernel on RH9.
      It's not specific to Ferdora, but it should be enough to get you through it. It looks pretty generic and is very similar to what I did before I began using Debian's kernel-package [sourceforge.net] system to manage my custom kernels (which BTW, is one of the best things about using Debian, especially if you are using more than one box).

      You may want to familiarize your self with the
      lspci
      command, and possible with the
      /proc/pci
      file (use
      cat /proc/pci
      in an xterm to read it) in order to be sure that you're not leaving out support for some of your hardware. Read the help file for anything you don't know about, and don't hesitate to read the device specific files for items that you might need (if they have them).

      Be sure to use the Fedora users list [redhat.com] for questions that you can't figure out from the docs. I'm sure there's lots of helpful folk there. If it's anything like debian-user [debian.org] you'll have no problems getting prompt and helpful answers. (If anyone gives you an RTFM, follow the provided link if there is one, if they did not provide one, then list the docs you've already consulted and ask if there's something you've missed and where it might be). Using the lists is not scary and, despite the *ss-hats who think otherwise, RTFM is not an insult. You'll learn much faster if you read the material yourself and ask questions afterward.

      Be sure to set up your
      /etc/lilo.conf
      to boot from more to one kernel (if you're using grub you'll need help from sonmeone else for this). Move your old kernel into the new place (usually, I use
      /boot/vmlinuz.old
      for this) so you'll have a working alternative if you screw things up.

      Be patient, take your time, check everything twice. It take's quite a bit of time to do this the first few times, but once you know your way aroiund the kernel config you realize that it's realy not all that difficult.

    • Re:Installation? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Telex4 ( 265980 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @11:39AM (#8761598) Homepage
      You might find this document useful:

      http://www.newtolinux.org.uk/tutorials/linuxkern el .shtml

      It introduces all the basics of the kernel, including what it contains, and how to start playing around with modules. At the bottom there are some links to tutorials on compiling your kernel, and then setting up your bootloader.

      In all, they should get you through all except odd problems.

  • DMA API changes? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mithrandir_The_Wise ( 765275 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @09:51AM (#8761199)
    According to this article [lwn.net] on LWN.net there was a patch by Dave Miller that changed the DMA API (see the Changelog for 2.6.5, from Dave Miller submitted through Andrew Morton) which *might* break binary drivers. All the in-kernel drivers are fixed, but the out-of-tree stuff might screw up. Just a heads up.

  • Scheduler? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by moxruby ( 152805 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @09:53AM (#8761203)
    After reading the hype regarding the new kernel, I installed mandrake 10.0 (k2.6.3 I believe) to check it out. I was disapointed; mp3s skip under light loads even after I raised the priority of the player to maximum. I've got a 1.3ghz duron w/ 256mb ram so the machine should be able to cope.
    I googled for a mandrake-specific bug but found nothing... Anyone else had the same problem?

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

      by Anonymous Coward
      I had this kind of problem with the kernel 2.6.3-3mdk. I update recently to the kernel 2.6.3-7mdk and the problem went away.
    • I don't know about 10.0, but I've put 9.2s on a lot of machines (including Duron 900s, 128MB of ram, and never had a hitch, hell, even my PII 450 doesn't jump mp3s). Have you checked that there isn't something else hogging the soundcard (like a modem for example), and that you are using the right drivers? HTH David
    • nope and I'm on a P-II 500. I can start skipping if I start a compile with a -j2 flag though....

      I would strongly suggest looking at your install (fresh and not an upgrade right?)

      and/or your hardware... maybe the 2.6 kernel + MDK10 uncovered something that is wrong?
    • Either A> you have a driver (or hardware) problem or B> preempt became turned off. I'm betting on the driver since everyone else in the world seems to be having audio problems on 2.6...
    • That doesn't sound right to me a at all. I didn't have any problems paying mp3s and compiling on a 366 Pentium 2. That was under the standard 2.6 scheduler. My guess offhand is a bad sound driver or maybe DMA is off.

      Some people in this thread suggested preempt but honestly, in 2.6 I think its pretty much useless (I have it disabled in all my kernels). 2.6 doesn't seem to have the latency to require preempt.

      They again, I'm one of "those people" that has a horribly tweaked out kernel. I'm running the w

  • version.h (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jmoen ( 169557 ) <jarand@moen.gmail@com> on Sunday April 04, 2004 @10:02AM (#8761235)
    Seems like version.h is missing from include/linux in this release (I patched from 2.6.4).
    Made my ATI binary driver fail the compile, though by copying my 2.6.3 version.h file fixed it.
    I thought the version.h file where used by several other prgograms that compiles against the kernel.
    Am I missing something obvious here ?

    • Re:version.h (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kourino ( 206616 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @10:06AM (#8761253) Homepage
      Uhh, version.h is a generated file. It'll get rebuilt if you (e.g.) make menuconfig. (Actually, 'make prepare0' will work, as will ... well, 'make include/linux/version.h' ^_^ )

    • Re:version.h (Score:3, Informative)

      by LordHunter317 ( 90225 )
      IF you're on Debian and tried compiling your kernel with kernel-package_8.084, this is just one of hte problems I saw. For whatever reason, that version of kernel-package is extermely broken and not working correctly.

  • Reiserfs (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EvilTwinSkippy ( 112490 ) <{yoda} {at} {etoyoc.com}> on Sunday April 04, 2004 @10:27AM (#8761336) Homepage Journal
    Have they fixed the goofiness with reiserfs and 2.6. On my RAID array I get random oddities, like a user who owns a file but can't access it. And our Veritas Backup Exec client won't decend down to a reiserfs mounted volume.

    Sure I could wipe and reformat the array, but the bugger is 100GB and my last restore took 48 hours.

    • You can look at the changelog yourself (the title blurb contains the link) but none of the reiserfs change-descriptions look as though they apply to that particular problem.

      If a user owns a file but can't access it: try copying it (as root), deleting the original and then renaming the copy to the original and with the original's chown/chmod values.

      I did not test reiserfs this time round because I migrated my last two reiser partitions to xfs just before upgrading the kernel this morning.

  • I don't believe it (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nighttime ( 231023 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @10:44AM (#8761394) Homepage Journal
    Busy setting up a new Linux box, downloaded 2.6.4 less than an hour ago from a local mirror. As it was downloading I was thinking to myself, "I wonder when 2.6.5 is due out?"
    I'm halfway through configuring it when I noticed a message in an IRC channel that 2.6.5 has just been released.

    Time to grab the latest patch file.

  • VM/swapd (Score:4, Interesting)

    by evac ( 459839 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @11:45AM (#8761632)
    From the "I-might-have-to-run-this-in-production" department, VM patches like this in a stable tree give me the roaring shiznits:

    [PATCH] Narrow blk_congestion_wait races
    [PATCH] kswapd throttling fixes - comment "The logic in balance_pgdat() is all bollixed up"
    [PATCH] shrink_slab: math precision fix - comment "In shrink_slab(), do the multiply before the divide to avoid losing precision." !!!!
    [PATCH] vmscan: avoid bogus throttling
    [PATCH] fix the kswapd zone scanning algorithm ...etc etc. Many more of the same.

    If we're weren't currently having VM issues with 2.4 (servers with 8gig+ memory) I wouldn't care. But we're seriously thinking of using 2.6 in production to resolve it. No, stop laughing, really.

    Actually I don't think I'm going to read any more kernel changelogs. It's like being at a restaurant, sometimes you just don't want to know what's going on in the kitchen. Except with open source, the kitchen is more like a public urinal. And the food is one big shit sandwich that everone... ok I'll stop now.

    • Re:VM/swapd (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:49PM (#8761993)
      So what do you want, a changelog that says "innovated better code" and "increased customer satisfaction" and "leveraged performance enhancements to empower customer" for every change ?

  • Mini ITX & i2c (Score:4, Informative)

    by Cytlid ( 95255 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:08PM (#8761757)
    For those of you (like me) who might have an EPIA-V mini-itx board and want to use lm_senors, the chipset (vt8231) doesn't look like it's been ported to 2.6 yet. :( grep i2c ChangeLog came up with quite a bit, but no port for that chip yet...

  • Bit Torrent (Score:5, Informative)

    by peripatetic_bum ( 211859 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:50PM (#8761995) Homepage Journal
    Why dont they set up a bittorent link, I have no idea anyway here it is http://mung.net/~dude/linux-2.6.5.torrent [mung.net]

  • Increase in crap (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:58PM (#8762030)
    There's been a quite notable increase in crap [vidarholen.net] in 2.6.5!

  • Again (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @01:53PM (#8762316) Homepage Journal
    I must say again the same thing I said the last time the kernel updated. Make a USEFUL CHANGELOG. That huge document is completely useless to a guy like me who needs to decide whether or not to rebuild his kernel or not. Make a changelog more like winamps that lists what actually happened. For example

    * X piece of hardware now works
    * We made X faster
    * X is more secure now
    * X is more stable now

    stuff like that is useful because I can grep for X and see if anything I use is changed. With the current changelogs I get stuff like.

    I chose this at random
    <mpm@selenic.com>
    [PATCH] netconsole init return code

    tiny-mpm/drivers/net/netconsole.c | 4 ++--
    1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
    What the hell does this mean? Obviously the netconsole return code was changed. 2 lines were added and two lines were removed. But wtf does this mean for the end user!!?! You know the guy who compiles and uses the kernel, but never hacks the source. Make a changelog for me!

    • Re:Again (Score:4, Funny)

      by hacker ( 14635 ) <hacker@gnu-designs.com> on Sunday April 04, 2004 @09:27PM (#8765051)
      As you no-doubt already know, many of the kernel maintainers are electively omitting the details from their log entries, due to DMCA pressure [theaimsgroup.com]. Publishing fixes that close exploitable holes, or describe security measures that were worked around or closed, is a potential violation.

      The lack of detail, is intentional.

  • Laptop Mode (Score:5, Informative)

    by cerberusss ( 660701 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @02:11PM (#8762416) Journal
    It would be great if they would include this laptop mode [xs4all.nl] patch, like they did in 2.4. It really prolongs battery life on my laptop, not to mention that with quick spindown times (using hdparm) it kinda solves the heat problem [dell.com] on my Dell D600 laptop.

    • Re:Laptop Mode (Score:3, Informative)

      by Kourino ( 206616 )
      It looks like the laptop mode patch is in Andrew Morton's -mm patch series. Since -mm has the leading edge of six different maintainer trees for merging with Linus, and contains lots of other general fixes, running -mm may not be a bad idea, since fixes often appear in -mm before they do in mainline. (Of course, sometimes things break in -mm that aren't broken yet in mainline too ... )

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