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Linux Kernel 2.6.14 Released 223

Posted by Zonk from the something-new-to-play-with dept.
digitalderbs writes "Linux kernel 2.6.14 was released on 10-28. OSnews reports on new features like 'HostAP, FUSE, the linux port of the plan9's 9P protocol, netlink connector, relayfs, securityfs, centrino's wireless drivers, support for DCCP (currently a RFC draft, PPTP, full 4 page-table support for ppc64, numa-aware slab allocator, lock-free descriptor lookup' and many other things. The changelog is also available."
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Linux Kernel 2.6.14 Released More

Linux Kernel 2.6.14 Released

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  • Notable Release (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @02:02PM (#13909535) Homepage Journal
    The "comprehensible changelog" [kernelnewbies.org] is slashdotted. Why is the high-level feature list of the release such a low priority, though so demanded? I know programmers prefer writing C to writing English (or Finnish, or Hindi, or German). But what good is code people don't install because they don't know what it does for us? There are so many people hanging around OSS projects who can't or don't contribute to the code. Surely some of those people can help by at least distilling the changes into a brief description. Release notes might not be the most important product of a release cycle, but they often control everything that product consumers do after the release is published.

    • Article text (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30, 2005 @02:14PM (#13909574)
      2.6.14

      • Released October 27, 2005 changelog [kernel.org]

      • Numa-aware slab allocator: It creates slabs on multiple nodes and manages slabs in such a way that locality of allocations is optimized. Each node has its own list of partial, free and full slabs. All object allocations for a node occur from node specific slab lists (commit - benchmarks) [kernel.org]

      • Lazy page table copies in fork() for VMAs without anonymous pages (the ones with anonymous pages are still copied): Defer copying of ptes until fault time when it is possible to reconstruct the pte from backing store, speeding up fork() greatly specially for processes using lots of shared memory (commit) [kernel.org]

      • Add /proc/$PID/smaps: This file will shows how much memory is resident in each mapping. Useful for people who want to perform memory consumption analysis (commit) [kernel.org]

      • Add /proc/$PID/numa_maps: This file will show on which nodes pages reside (commit) [kernel.org]

      • Lock-free file descriptor look-up (commit) [kernel.org] - (commit) [kernel.org]

      • Four-level page table support for the ppc64 architecture: extends the usable user address range to 44 bits (16T). (commit) [kernel.org]

      • Support hotplug cpu on 32-bit SMP powermacs: When a cpu is off-lined, it is put into sleep mode with interrupts disabled. It can be on-lined again by asserting its soft-reset pin, which is connected to a GPIO pin (commit) [kernel.org]

      • Add TASK_NONINTERACTIVE task state bit to the cpu scheduler: It can be used by blocking points to mark the task's wait as "non-interactive". This does not mean the task will be considered a CPU-hog - the wait will simply not have an effect on the waiting task's priority - positive or negative alike (commit) [kernel.org]

      • PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol) support: RFC 2637 [ietf.org]. Used to implement VPN products (notably, Microsoft in all the Windows versions). Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] (commit) [kernel.org]

      • DCCP: "Datagram Congestion Control Protocol". Datagram protocol (like UDP), but with a congestion control mechanism. (LWN article) [lwn.net] Currently a RFC draft [icir.org] (commit) [kernel.org]

      • Implement SKB fast cloning: Protocols that make extensive use of SKB cloning, for example TCP, eat at least 2 allocations per packet sent as a result. To

      • What is... (Score:5, Informative)

        by dubl-u ( 51156 ) * <2523987012@pota . t o> on Sunday October 30, 2005 @02:47PM (#13909717)
        I wondered what a bunch of those things were. Here's what I found in a quick search:


        Just a quick scan of pages, though, so I could be off on some of these.

        • Final straw (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I think this release of the Linux kernel is the final straw for me using FreeBSD.

          Their failure to implement a fully functional ext3 makes it impossible to find a decent FreeBSD hosting company that offers virtual file partition management via web interface. Even with upcoming Xen3, most providers will be using Linux hosts and the inability to mount/resize FreeBSD partition is just another barrier for making FreeBSD available customers.

          This latest release of Linux kernel is just another example of how diffi

          • Oh, no! (Score:4, Funny)

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30, 2005 @07:59PM (#13911460)
            There goes the last *BSD user...

          • Re:Final straw (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Malor ( 3658 )
            The Linux kernel has many features, but it has them at the expense of stability. This new kernel did not drive the network card properly on my server, an Athlon 1900+ on an ASUS K7V333. It complained about stuck interrupts.

            To get it to run, I had to remove the 'noacpi' line from the kernel boot parameters. This makes me very nervous, because I ADDED it to fix a problem with the software RAID code on this machine. I got occasional, mysterious "ACPI error" messages in the system log, with no other explana

            • your Linux problems (Score:3, Interesting)

              by r00t ( 33219 )
              Let's start with "noacpi". This is a very bad thing to specify, as you've seen. Modern systems rely on ACPI. Many of us think that this is gross, because ACPI requires a byte-code interpreter in the kernel, but such is life as designed by some nameless Intel committee. Your BIOS settings should be all hot-plug, plug-and-play, ACPI, buzzword++. Linux works quite well with those settings. You're expected to have udev to manage /dev, the hotplug tools, etc. This is how modern hardware is intended to be used, a

    • Re:Notable Release (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MoogMan ( 442253 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @02:17PM (#13909587)
      Kernels are not intended for the consumer. It is assumed that you have a certain level of understanding to install and configure the Linux Kernel.
      • You're using the wrong definition of "consumer" - too narrow. People consume kernels whenever we install them, even when we're developers, or even kernel committers. And kernel consumers don't even necessarily configure or build them - "apt-get install kernel-image" is the act of a kernel consumer. When that consumer knows the upgrade is worth consuming. The minimum amount of understanding should be necessary for people to upgrade: the understanding that they want to upgrade.

      • Re:Notable Release (Score:4, Insightful)

        by The_Dougster ( 308194 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @05:18PM (#13910515) Homepage
        Kernels are not intended for the consumer. It is assumed that you have a certain level of understanding to install and configure the Linux Kernel.

        True, but building your own kernel isn't particularly challenging either. Basically if you have installed your GCC compiler and a couple of extra packages then as long as you can follow a recipe you can probably build a reasonably good kernel tailored for your system.

        Running LILO is probably the most dangerous part, because if your config file isn't right you can leave your system unbootable. A much better option is taking the time to learn GRUB and get it installed because once it is installed all you have to do is add a couple lines to a text file to add another kernel to the list. That way you just leave your existing kernel hanging around until you get your home-made one perfected. It usually takes me a couple of attempts to get a new kernel compiled to my satisfaction.

        I don't upgrade my kernel very often either. Once I get a stable system that runs well and has all my drivers supported I usually keep that kernel for a year or so, unless I'm feeling bored and just want to play around with the latest and greatest for fun.

        • can grub do a boot configuration once like lilo can.

          boot configuration once is a very handy feature if you have a remote powerswitch but no other way of getting at the machine until/unless networking comes up.

        • add a couple lines to a text file to add another kernel to the list. That way you just leave your existing kernel hanging around until you get your home-made one perfected.
          LILO's the same way, dude, no difference. In fact, I do that with Debian-installed kernels so I can be sure they're clean. I even have Memtest86+ in the list too.

        • "True, but building your own kernel isn't particularly challenging either. Basically if you have installed your GCC compiler and a couple of extra packages then as long as you can follow a recipe..."
          ...and know what every option means, and every device you have...
          "...you can probably build a reasonably good kernel tailored for your system."

          Compiling a kernel is for experienced users, it can only be this way.

        • Re:Notable Release (Score:4, Informative)

          by Malor ( 3658 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @10:18PM (#13912091) Journal
          There are two main reasons to run GRUB. The first is because you can build new kernel start lines on the fly. LILO has to be hardcoded with kernel locations on disk. You can change the boot parameters, but you can't start random kernels. GRUB, on the other hand, understands enough of the filesystems on which it lives to allow you to boot arbitrary kernels on the fly.

          The second reason (closely related) is that if, for some reason, the kernel files move around on disk (did you just restore from backup?), LILO blows up, and GRUB just works.

          Either bootloader can be used safely to remember multiple different kernels for routine experimentation.

      • Re:Notable Release (Score:3, Interesting)

        by nihilogos ( 87025 )
        Kernels are not intended for the consumer

        Everyone should try compiling their own kernel at least once. It's not hard, and is a great learning experience. And there is something satisfying about knowing that the kernel you're running was compiled specifically for your machine, with no extraneous fluff like "Ham Radio Support".

        Just make sure you keep the old one safe.
    • Try reading the netbsd changes log to figure out what NetBSD 3.0 will include. Only bob_smiley wrote driver for the hijinker api.

      still have no clue what NetBSD 3.0 will come and I am supposed to figure it out on my own.

  • Reiser4? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Cumshot ( 859434 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @02:03PM (#13909538)
    Does anyone know if/when reiser4 will be included into the mainline kernel? I recall reading a kerneltrap interview a while back with Andrew Morton, in which he basically said "sure, why not?" to including it into the next release..
    • I have a bad feeling that it is quicker for them to rewrite it using fuse that to get it into the mainstream kernel. that said, I think it will end up in the main stream kernel "someday". but I don't think we will see it until the next major kernel release.
    • By all accounts Reiser4 deserves to be in the kernel -- it's great forward-looking technology [kerneltrap.org]; reiser3 is a great success. Unfortunately Reiser4 seems caught in the crossfire [kerneltrap.org] of egos, and nobody wants to rise above petty squabbles (and I'm not blaming Hans. He's the guy who's invested all the energy and no small amount of intelligence into the product, for grot's sake).

      It's time, IMHO, for Linus to pull rank and just order it merged.

      • Re:Reiser4? -- victim of politics+human nature (Score:5, Interesting)

        by lubricated ( 49106 ) <michalp@@@gmail...com> on Sunday October 30, 2005 @03:27PM (#13909865)
        If it's anything like 3 was when it came into the kernel please leave it out. 3 was only let into the kernel because reiser bitched and bitched, but it was unstable and buggy. I have been much happier with ext3.

      • Re:Reiser4? -- victim of politics+human nature (Score:5, Informative)

        by Bloater ( 12932 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @03:34PM (#13909896) Homepage Journal
        Linus won't order it in since Andrew Morton (his right-hand man) has already indicated that it will go in. There are a few concerns raised by Christoph Hellwig (lkml's resident pitt-bull) that Andrew Morton has asked to be fixed before it goes into vanilla. Mostly these issues have only held up inclusion (a filesystem would normally have got merged with just those style issues) because of concerns that after inclusion the code would be abandoned and even cleanups being opposed by the original developers as allegedly happened with reiser3.

        features and performance are *not* the top priorities in Linux, the top priority is maintainability. The rate at which features and performance improvements are added is a consequence of the maintainability, which must not be compromised for the sake of a slightly cool filesystem.
        • features and performance are *not* the top priorities in Linux, the top priority is maintainability.

          There is little to indicate Namesys' code is less maintainable than anyone else's. Most indications are that it is probably significantly better than many subsystems. Reiser4 in particular has been redesigned for modularity, etc...

          • Re:Reiser4? -- victim of politics+human nature (Score:5, Informative)

            by Bloater ( 12932 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @04:23PM (#13910135) Homepage Journal
            The vfs already has modularity, and the vfs is *the* Linux filesystem where the filesystems are modules that implement separate storage backends but all the same semantics.

            One problem with reiser4 (now addressed in the code proposed for inclusion at this time) was that it changed some of the defined semantics of the vfs. This bit won't go in until it is thoroughly discussed and user-space has subsequently been prepared for it (and deprecation of the old behaviour widely expected).

            The problem with the modularity of reiser4 is that is implemented fully inside reiser4 instead of being designed as a modification of the vfs where reiser4 simply provides one storage backend. The reiser4 modules should have been put right up behind the vfs as a proof of concept for the first integration, where the new modularity features could be moved bit-by-bit into the vfs, where all filesystem are then just a storage backend and all could be easily made to support the transaction and query facilities expected.

            Some of the style problems included things like generic datatypes being implemented in the reiser4 directory instead of as a general facility for the kernel as a whole. Most of these were fixed, I believe, but AFAIK the problem of the level at which the modularity is implemented, and the failure to distinguish between semantic/feature modules and storage backend is not a good design.

        • Re:Reiser4? -- victim of politics+human nature (Score:4, Informative)

          by IpSo_ ( 21711 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @04:38PM (#13910246) Homepage Journal
          Reiser3 is FAR from abandoned by Namesys. Anyone can post patches to it and get them in the kernel, Hans has no control over that, and it has been proven because SuSE developers have gotten patches in to the kernel against Hans wishes.

          ReiserFS3 is "version 3" of the Reiser filesystem. Hans wants it to be deemed "stable" and free from new FEATURES, and only bug fixes be applied. Any new features he wants to put in the next version of ReiserFS, v4. Rarely do you see MAJOR features from Kernel v2.6 being backported to v2.4, there is reason for that, because with features comes bugs.

          For some reason people consider this to be abandoning Reiser3. When it is quite the opposite.
        • Christoph (no, it's not me) is not "lkml's resident pitt-bull". He's just someone who knows a lot about filesystems and who's one of the more prolific contributors to the kernel - why Hans Reiser seems to think the he's on a personal crusade against Reiser4, I don't know, but I think it says a lot about Hans' own attitude. Christoph is trying to offer helpful suggestions and point out flaws in the current code, and he does have valid concerns. The real problem is that Hans is not a coder anymore who cares a
          • > Christoph (no, it's not me) is not "lkml's resident pitt-bull". He's just someone who knows a lot about filesystems and who's one of the more prolific contributors to the kernel - why Hans Reiser seems to think the he's on a personal crusade against Reiser4,

            I don't doubt that he is very skilled, but he's still the resident pit bull, if you've read any of the flame fests he's been involved in. He jumps in to just about every fireball conjuring match that rears its ugly head on lkml (Hans Reiser is simil

      • Re:Reiser4? -- victim of politics+human nature (Score:5, Interesting)

        by dubl-u ( 51156 ) * <2523987012@pota . t o> on Sunday October 30, 2005 @03:45PM (#13909935)
        and I'm not blaming Hans.

        Reading that thread, I'm not sure why. ReiserFS may be the bees' knees, but that's no excuse for that kind of behavior. Kernel style is kernel style; if Reiser thinks they should change kernel style, that's a reasonable thing to discuss, but the fuck-you-my-code's-better-than-your-crappy-code routine sure isn't the way to go about it.
    • I believe there was some large disagreement on weather to include it into the kernel. If memory serves, Linus didn't want it but Hans did. So I don't think it will be included unless there is some change which makes Linux consider his stance on filesystems.

      Do a search on slashdot for Hans' posts, they are quite insightful.

    • Re:Reiser4? (Score:3, Informative)

      by bersl2 ( 689221 )
      There is much miscommunication happening w.r.t. Reiser4 on LKML and elsewhere. Until that is cleared up, don't expect Reiser4 in the mainline anytime soon without some kind of fallout.
    • Correct me if I don't know what I'm talking about (I'm sure I don't), but if one of the features (FUSE) allows filesystem userspace file system drivers, wouldn't that bypass the whole issue? Reiser can use different style than the kernel guidelines and use whatever kind of plugin system he likes, and the kernel folks won't have to worry about it?
      • well, let me ask you a question in return.

        how will you boot from a filesystem that can only be accessed using a driver/module/fuse thingy that is located on that same filesystem?

        I admit you can do tricks with boot images or a small "startup" partition but that surely isn't much fun.
        • If your partitions are split up like many people's, that's exactly the effect. /boot is a small ext2 partition (or whatever your bootloader recognizes), / is a fairly small partition, usually ext2 or ext3 (or whatever your kernel will recognize w/o modules). Then /var and /usr are whatever you like, and usually /usr takes most of the drive (if /home isn't a link to /usr/home then you'd probably want a /home as well). Personally I don't have seperate /usr or /var partitions right now but that's just becaus
      • from what i've heared things like LUFS and FUSE suck performance wise compared to real drivers in the kernel. This is not so imporant for a special purpose FS or a network mapper but you don't particularlly wan't your main partitions on them.

  • huh? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @02:05PM (#13909544) Homepage
    Wow, there's not a single thing on that list of features that I understand. Either these are names for things I wanted but didn't know the names for, or these are all things I don't need.

    Hasn't the kernel pretty much reached the point where, for the average user, the only problems are those that just can't be fixed -- in other words, drivers for proprietary devices that haven't had their specs released by the manufacturers?

    • Re:huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @02:23PM (#13909608) Homepage
      Wow, there's not a single thing on that list of features that I understand. Either these are names for things I wanted but didn't know the names for, or these are all things I don't need.

      If you told me the changes in Ford's latest car engine, I probably wouldn't understand them either, certainly not if I need them or not. Normal people aren't supposed to understand a kernel change log. Device drivers are the odd exception, not the rule (and more often than not have little to do with the kernel, the kernel provides an interface and someone writes a driver to that interface).

    • Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)

      by radarsat1 ( 786772 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @02:23PM (#13909609) Homepage
      Hasn't the kernel pretty much reached the point where, for the average user, the only problems are those that just can't be fixed

      A lot of things that the "average user" takes for granted are supported by features in the kernel that they didn't know even existed.
      A lot of things that Linux *applications* need to do require kernel features that need to be implemented.
      Take all the new search utilities (Beagle et al.) for example, they are depending on kernel features like "Inotify". If you read about Inotify you probably wouldn't give a damn, but you read about Beagle and then understand the point.
      Same goes for other types of features, like more secure/reliable filesystems. Sure the average user "doesn't care", but he sure cares when that feature wasn't implemented and he ended up losing half his work to a crash.

      Besides, one of the biggest complaints about Linux is that when a brand-new application comes along that requires a user to "patch and recompile the kernel", it's *too hard* for the average user. So be happy when these features become included by default.

    • Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)

      by kebes ( 861706 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @02:28PM (#13909630) Journal
      the only problems are those that just can't be fixed -- in other words, drivers for proprietary devices

      (note: I'm no expert on the linux kernel) Yes and no. Much of what is left to be done in linux kernel has to do with proprietary devices. However, these things are not in the category "cannot be fixed." In fact, OSS developers constantly reverse-engineer new devices and standards, and get them working properly. It is hard, but can be done. For instance, this release includes enhanced support for Centrino, which is a standard for wireless connectivity (in laptops, etc.). Just because companies do not release specs does not mean that the linux kernel cannot include support for them. It is very very hard, but somehow they manage to do it!

      And in a broader sense, the kernel is never "done" because computer hardware and software is constantly evolving, and thus the kernel must constantly evolve to meet modern demands. Yes, a 10-year old kernel will probably run your web server just fine, but the newer kernel versions integrate much better with newer hardware technology.

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

        by Tom ( 822 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @03:27PM (#13909866) Homepage Journal
        In fact, OSS developers constantly reverse-engineer new devices and standards, and get them working properly. It is hard, but can be done. For instance, this release includes enhanced support for Centrino, which is a standard for wireless connectivity (in laptops, etc.).

        Bad example, these drivers are officially supported by Intel. See, e.g. the project page [slashdot.org].
        • The grandparent poster was probably actually thinking of the nVidia ethernet drivers that were reverse engineered a little while back as part of the nForce chipsets.

      • There's still a lot of fundamental work outside of proprietary drivers and keeping up with the latest specs and all that. The NUMA slab allocator in this release, for example, qualifies as that type of thing. So does the spinlock consolidation and the lockless file descriptor thing from the Changelog. The Linux kernel is a huge, huge project. We could freeze all hardware and standards in the world so that there was nothing left to do but refine the kernel we have today, and it would still take another 5

    • Wow, there's not a single thing on that list of features that I understand.

      You are on the Intarweb. Get reading. There is plenty of good information available, epsecially about computer science.

    • there's not a single thing on that list of features that I understand

      Just because you lack the level of knowledge enough to understand what the list consists of, doesn't mean those loads of fixes and features are all useless. In fact I'm really happy new features are not only shopwindow-additions like some big companies do: list for hours what they "added" so 6packs feel they really gave out their money for something.

    • Higher-level features (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Wow, there's not a single thing on that list of features that I understand.

      Much of what is on that list is a bit esoteric, but I think you might be exagerating. If you don't know what these are, you don't deserve the title of ``geek'':

      PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol) support: RFC 2637 [ietf.org]. Used to implement VPN products (notably, Microsoft in all the Windows versions).

      IPV6: Support several new sockopt / ancillary data in Advanced API (RFC3542)

      FUSE: Allows to implement a fully functional files
      • 9P allows you to share resources transparently - none of this "it's printer X on machine Y" nonsense. For most home users, that's not such a big deal - there aren't that many computers or devices. But even there, there may well be times when you want to move things around, or your roommate does so when drunk, and you still want things to work the way you'd expect.

        IPv6 isn't a big deal for most people. Yet. If you've a laptop with IPv6, and you are in a cafe with wireless IPv6, then you move to a bookshop wi


    • Wow, there's not a single thing on that list of features that I understand. Either these are names for things I wanted but didn't know the names for, or these are all things I don't need.

      I was going to say:
      Parse Error:
      Perhaps you are missing an ) after "currently an RFC draft"

      Most of the rest of it is quite interesting. I wonder how often PPTP will actually be used now that we have really mature IPSec implimentations in place....

  • This is funny (Score:3, Informative)

    by cuerty ( 671497 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @02:06PM (#13909547)
    Because of this [slashdot.org] troll.
    lol.

    • Re:This is funny (Score:3, Insightful)

      by CyricZ ( 887944 )
      How is it a "troll"? It's obviously pointing out a very real flaw with regards the Slashdot news reporting.

      Kids these days throw around the word "troll" like politicians throw around the words "terrorist" and "communist". It is often used out of context and at the wrong times, and thus has no true meaning any longer.

      • Kids these days throw around the word "troll" like politicians throw around the words "terrorist" and "communist". It is often used out of context and at the wrong times, and thus has no true meaning any longer.

        I just meta-moderated a troll as unfair, which I usually do, by the way. Just because a moderator disagrees with a post does not make the author of the post a troll.

        • Re:This is funny (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          One of the problems is that there isn't a mod for "wrong". So if you encounter a post which is just obviously incorrect, how do you mod it? Overrated, troll, or flamebait are your only options..

  • Centrino wireless drivers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lord_rob the only on ( 859100 ) <shiva3003@@@gmail...com> on Sunday October 30, 2005 @02:07PM (#13909551)

    How does that differ from ipw2200 drivers [sf.net] ?

    BTW, here's a coral link [nyud.net] for the kernel changelog.

  • Look out Linux gimps, here comes the troll song! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30, 2005 @02:08PM (#13909553)
    "The problem's all inside your head", she said to me
    The crap filter is annoying, I agree
    You can defeat it if you do it logically
    There must be fifty ways to troll on Slashdot

    She said it's not really my habit to intrude
    The sensationalist titles are often misconstrued
    The editors' spelling may be somewhat crude
    There must be fifty ways to troll on Slashdot
    Fifty ways to troll on Slashdot

    Mods are on crack, Jack
    Repost spam, Sam
    GNAA, Ray
    Just set yourself free
    Get a first post, Gus
    You don't need to discuss much
    Hit the refresh key, Lee
    And get yourself free

    Goatse.cx Tex,
    Widen the page, Dave
    Stephen King's dead, Fred
    Just set yourself free
    Change the article text, Gus
    You don't need to discuss much
    BSD's dead, Lee
    Just get yourself free

    Although it grieves me to see Zonk in so much pain
    I post "I fail it!" and then start to smile again
    Netcraft confirms that Wikipedia explains
    About the fifty ways to troll on Slashdot

    She said why don't we both karma whore tonight
    Thinks about your breathing, you'll begin to see the light
    She poured hot grits down herself and I know she was right
    There must be fifty ways to troll on Slashdot
    Fifty ways to troll on Slashdot

    Is it whack, Jack
    Viewing tubgirl, Earl
    Mod up a flame, Shane
    Just set yourself free
    KDE sucks, Gus
    You don't need to discuss much
    Referral link, Lee
    Just set yourself free

  • Great for klik and go applications (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30, 2005 @02:12PM (#13909567)
    Well, this new kernel is great news for the http://klik.atekon.de/ [atekon.de] service which allows you to directly run the latest experimental linux applications or stable debian packages in a user account by just clicking a link to run and install without messing up your installation (just like selfcontained Apple appliction folders).

    The mounting of file systems without root permisson means klik will become even easier to install on linux distributions. And it already runs on several distributions without configuaration.

  • File descriptor offsets? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Gerald ( 9696 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @02:25PM (#13909617) Homepage
    Does it let you determine offsets for open files yet? I'd really, really like to be able to run lsof -o [livejournal.com] under Linux.

  • PPTP (Score:2)

    by abigor ( 540274 )
    That's nice to see this finally in there, very good for those of us that need to use this protocol to VPN in to work. No more MPPE patches for me!

    • Re:PPTP (Score:4, Informative)

      by mmclure ( 26378 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @03:15PM (#13909821) Homepage
      Sorry - this isn't the MPPE patches. This is support for PPTP packets being tracked through iptables. What I believe this will let you do is have multiple PCs behind a Linux firewall be able to use PPTP at the same time (prior to this PPTP through a Linux iptables firewall would work for only one PC at a time.)
  • Not only does this kernel support the Active Protection system on newer thinkpad hard drives, it also supports DRM for the Savage graphics series. Most importantly for me, as a T23 owner: they fixed the crash-on-resume bug in the SuperSavage series!

  • FUSE is way cool (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30, 2005 @02:52PM (#13909736)
    Check out FuseFS [rubyforge.org], for example (see why it's cool [hobix.com]). Or encfs [arg0.net] (see O'Reilly article [linuxdevcenter.com]).

    Linux is starting to go beyond emulating the Unixes of yore, to create a whole new world of computing.
    • Sounds like that's approaching what Plan 9 [faqs.org] was supposed to be...very interesting. I don't like network filesystems (an example from the linked article) that much, though, because mv, cp, rm, and friends don't give you progress indications.

  • Error: (Score:3, Funny)

    by DJCater ( 877532 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @02:54PM (#13909744)
    missing ) in parenthetical

    (currently a RFC draft, PPTP, full 4 page-table support for ppc64, numa-aware slab allocator, lock-free descriptor lookup' and many other things. The changelog is also available."

    Welcome to Slashdot.
  • They fixed SBP2 device removal!

    (Previously, removing the SBP2, aka IEEE 1394 storage device, driver from the kernel had a habit of doing Bad Things.)

  • SMP AMD64s need this version (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jay Maynard ( 54798 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @03:32PM (#13909885) Homepage
    If you're running an SMP AMD64, you need this version to avoid random segfaults. It turns out that 4-level page table support on all but very current AMDs tickles a processor bug. See this discussion on the kernel Bugzilla [kernel.org] for more detail than you ever wanted to know.

  • Plan 9 protocol and FUSE (Score:3, Interesting)

    by spitzak ( 4019 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @04:01PM (#13910016) Homepage
    If these work, this is BIG news. IMHO these make Linux into a completely new operating system, not just a Unix clone. Everything a computer process can think about should be named in a single hierarchial namespace. Until now all operating systems except Plan9 have been bogged down by concepts that think that only blocks of bytes on a disk are eligable for this naming scheme.

    Expect vast numbers of FUSE programs. In the future I expect *most* non-trivial programs to actually be FUSE programs.

  • modern wifi, finally...but more needed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by drwho ( 4190 ) on Sunday October 30, 2005 @04:21PM (#13910127) Homepage Journal
    This is great, now that HostAP and Centrino are in the kernel. We've needed this to be in the mainstream kernel for some time. But Atheros support is still missing, and it's just as important, if not more important, than either of those chipsets. Most people are aware of the MadWifi drivers with closed-source HAL (i.e. part of the driver is closed source), but there's also a project by OpenBSD to make a completely open source driver for the Atheros cards, called OpenHAL. It's been ported to linux: http://cvs.pdos.csail.mit.edu/cvs/roofnet/release/ openhal/ [mit.edu] - but needs testing. Please work on it!
    • I was under the impression that ipw2200 drivers still required a binary-only module to operate. Has this been changed, or do 2.6.14 kernel users just need to download that module now (rather than the whole driver package) in order to have a functional wireless card?
  • that track which versions of the linux kernel are affected by which vunerabilities are fixed in what kernel versions? i'd like to know what kernel versions need to be upgraded or patched (and what to patch them with) to maintain a secure system.
  • Got myself a Promise Tx4000 card last week and was surprised that kernels before 2.6.13 didn't support it fully - the card was detected but the ATA disks weren't. I called the supplier and they gave me the 'linux not supported - buy at your own risk' speech. I was about to give up when I discovered that the latest kernel 2.6.13-rc5 (now 2.6.14) finally added support for the ATA channels on this card.

    Thanks. It's much appreciated.

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