1362695
story
Lface writes
"Linus has just announced a feature freeze for Linux 2.4. He further says: 'The feature freeze should be turning into a code freeze in another two months or so, and a release by the end of the year. And as everybody knows, our targets never slip.'"
Re:What about ext3 (Score:1)
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Re:How stable is this? (Score:3)
Good.
Why? Because it's a kernel, not a car. The Linux kernel shouldn't depend on a public relations blitz to be good. It should be good because the code kicks ass. Having the media sit up and take notice is fine. I'll be thrilled when 2.4 is out. But I wish the media would take the view that free software is like a steamroller. It just keeps grinding forward, getting slightly better every day, while commercial software is constantly running this way and that trying to chase dollars.
Re:What about ext3 (Score:1)
VFAT & ALSA (Score:1)
So, does VFAT work yet??? I've seen something about VFAT being Read/only, but I may have read that wrong, having never read the original post.
Second, I had heard that ALSA was going to be put into the kernel, to replace/supplement OSS/Free. Is this not going to happen in 2.3.x, or maybe it'll be a minor change doable in 2.4? Is ALSA not considered complete/stable enough. Comments welcome on both q's.
USB CD-RW's (Score:1)
Re:FireWire support (Score:1)
"I sent a patch to Linus two weeks ago, but he didn't reply, which basically means refused."
Is fully true. I am fairly certain Linus has been known to purge his mail (as he actually mentions doing
in this article) or pass stuff onto others to manage overload.
I assume you mailed it to the linux kernel list as well? That seems to be where new features find
supporters to lean on Linus
Re:VFAT & ALSA (Score:1)
ALSA is not in the main kernel at the moment, and I have no idea whether it will still be included or not. It does not seem very likely.
Re:Always Releasing (Score:1)
Though I take your point. My experience with FreeBSD taught me not to trust version-zero releases and wait at least for the first or second round of patches before installing them on any machine that is going to do any real work. A case in point was the release of 3.0 (and 3.1 was still a bit flaky), not least because in the early 3.x releases they were still migrating from a.out to ELF. (And the equally flaky USB support that IIRC disappeared in 3.2 due to popular frustration.)
Having said that - the sooner and the more people install 2.4.0(? I assume), the sooner the bugs will be found and fixed. I would be _very_ surprised if any remaining bugs were really significant. But then, I'm probably just being naïve...
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This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along.
Re:VFAT & ALSA (Score:1)
Having looked at ALSA's web site [alsa-project.org], I'd say that it has a way to go before it replaces OSS/Free. It still does not support many soundcards (or at least, the list on their site isn't particularly long) and the fact that the latest release (this month) is still a 0.x probably shouldn't fill anyone with confidence.
Aside: Linus has adopted Microsoft version numbering, he's just not telling anybody. That '.' between the two and the four really stands for '00' - which means, of course, that the 2.4 kernel will actually be released in 2006.
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This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along.
So what about ISDN? (Score:1)
Seems to me, that Linus somehow is pretty pissed at the attitude of the ISDN-Developers, who seem to release only Big Driver Chunks, when it is close to a feature freeze.
Any updates on that (I need a working ISDN-Driver)?
Ralph
Re:How stable is this? (Score:1)
If, OTOH, he has taken the Mindcraft study personally, we might see kernel development targetted specifically towards beating NT. But personally, I think that other features deserve more attention - Linux is already much faster than NT for me.
Don't take Linus so seriously, PLEASE :-P (Score:5)
For those of you to new to development kernel tracking, this is a JOKE, it's sarcasm. I have no doubt that Linus would like a freeze, and it COULD happen, but this is not written in stone.
I refer you to Kernel 2.1.69 notes [linuxhq.com] where Linus said:
Anyway, I personally don't see anything major pending. There are still various fixes that have yet to be integrated (some of the smbfs work by Bill etc), but on the whole I'd call this feature-freeze time. Have fun--Linus
As it happens, the development kernel kept going from 2.1.69 in 1-Dec-97 on to Linux 2.2.0-pre9 in 20-Jan-99, that's over a year.
Linus has a sence of humor, don't think every word out of his mouth is written in stone, this isn't Moses comeing down from the mountian with the ten commandments... . It's just a comment, and one said with tounge in cheek.
It could be "the freeze," but don't hold your breath.
Netfilter (Score:1)
PCMCIA finally made it. (Score:2)
List of features (Score:1)
Always Releasing (Score:1)
Just a thought...
Re:How stable is this? (Score:1)
Re:FireWire support (Score:1)
Re:How stable is this? (Score:2)
I personally think that Linus wants 2.4 to beat the pants off Windows NT on all benchmarks on any hardware. And when it does, you will see that all the penguins will have a proud grin carved in their faces.
So, having that said, has anyone benchmarked 2.3.18 lately?
Re:xfs file system (Score:1)
Re:Quick minor releases, long major releases... (Score:1)
Actually that "tree" exists in every OS lab on every college campus, and in every corporate R&D lab in the world, and in the mind of every kernel hacker on the net. The "experimental" tree you want needs to start from an stable kernel and attempt to add some specific feature to it from the outside - not part of the kernel development, but part of a standalone function development. Then the knowledge and experience that is gained from that endeavor comes back into the next release level (major or minor - depending on how big it is) and gets re-implemented (well, hopefully... in reality there will be some copy and paste-ism). Any time you're playing with cutting edge stuff the first draft is ususally less than optimal for general use... but oh the lessons you learned! How many times have you been involved in something to come back after several months and have to fix a bug only to ask "why did I structure it like this??"
USB? (Score:1)
Re:USB? (Score:1)
Re:Code freeze --> new release? (Score:1)
... of'course they are not that big as elephants like we are used from some software gigants ala Microsoft(tm)(r)(c)82-99.
Freaker / TuC
devfs inclusion (Score:3)
Re:so? (Score:3)
A feature freeze for the development branch of the kernel takes place when Linus decides that he doesn't want to accept anymore major changes - in other words, the development kernel (in this case, 2.3), is "feature complete", and all that remains before the release of the next stable kernel is a whole pile of bug-squashing.
In reality, it means that Linus won't accept anything unless you're really, really persuasive (and he has accepted some major changes at a late stage before). However, this time he's taking two weeks vacation to "avoid temptation".
Re:devfs inclusion (Score:4)
-- Does Rain Man use the Autistic License for his software?
Re:Code freeze --> new release? (Score:1)
Re:USB? (Score:5)
UHCI (intel PIIX4 and others) support
OHCI (compaq and some others) support
OHCI-HCD (other OHCI opt. Virt. Root Hub) support
USB hub support
USB mouse support
USB HP scanner support
USB keyboard support
USB audio parsing support
USB Communications Device Class (ACM) support
USB Printer support
USB CPiA Camera support
USB SCSI Support
EZUSB Firmware downloader
USS720 parport driver
Preliminary /proc/bus/usb support
-- Does Rain Man use the Autistic License for his software?
Code freeze --> new release? (Score:1)
Re:devfs inclusion (Score:2)
Linus has certain technical "issues" with the whole concept of devfs (although it is indeed very stable; Richard Gooch has been very tenacious in releasing devfs patches for new kernels within a day or two).
However, if I recall correctly (you tend to skim any threads about devfs in linux-kernel after the 1000th post asking about it:), Linus has relented a little lately, so it might be a candidate for 2.5, I guess.
NEW FILES SYSTEMS??? (Score:1)
Who knows..... But if ya do please do tell..
-Diz
Re:NEW FILES SYSTEMS??? (Score:4)
From what I understand from the posts some of the SGI folks have made is that XFS is not a "plug-in" filesystem driver, it requires changes all over the place.
Ofcourse I could be totally wrong
Re:NEW FILES SYSTEMS??? (Score:3)
No, there's no way XFS will make it into anything before 2.5 (the development branch for the 2.6 stable kernel), and maybe not even then. It's a pretty big chunk of code, and not originally designed for Linux, so it will most likely take quite a while to be ported. Linus' filesystem comment probably doesn't indicate anything specific on the horizon for 2.4, I would think.
Re:Code freeze --> new release? (Score:2)
Re:so...it's news (Score:1)
Re:How stable is this? (Score:2)
Re:devfs inclusion (Score:2)
I personally would really love to see devfs included in the official kernel. There are so many hot pluggable hard drives these days, it's really ridiculous to have to rename each device every time you pull out or insert a disk.
Re:Code freeze (Score:3)
Please note that the announcement was for a feature freeze, not a code freeze. A code freeze means that the stable release is imminent. There's still a lot to before we reach that point, I would say
LVM please (Score:1)
2G VFS limitation on x86 - no more. (Score:2)
Re:How stable is this? (Score:2)
I know most of you think that Linus is oblivious to these sorts of things (or would like to believe that anyway), but I frankly doubt it.
Re:How stable is this? (Score:1)
(eg. USB... well ok, i doubt you hate the idea of cutting the number of cables behind your desk in half...)
dufke
________________________________________
Re:USB? (Score:1)
Re:Code freeze --> new release? (Score:1)
Basicly it's "Don't send me new anything. If it doesn't fix existing code, I'm throwing it out. No new features anywhere, we don't have time to deal with them."
Reiser? (Score:2)
~tieguy
Re:"our targets never slip" (Score:1)
Oh well. Such are the clueless.
How stable is this? (Score:3)
Also, a more editorial comment - is anyone a little disappointed with the shortened release cycles? Nothing breeds anticipation like waiting for Linus to finally give the go ahead, after four months of bugfix releases, etc. But still, remember the madness when 2.2.0 was released? It was a damn fervor.. me and every Linux geek I know in RL had a party.. hehe. Now it seems like we've lost yet another cause for celebration. I don't see how the shortened devel cycles could possibly help, anyways. All that excitement spilled over into the media, and most of the major computer newsmags (A lot of ZD pubs, for example), ran a story on Linux just because 2.2 was released and it was such a momentous achievement. Now 2.4 is around the corner and no one seems really worked up, which means less press for us. What were Linus's reasons for doing this?
HP Scanners (Score:1)
Thanks
Re:Code freeze --> new release? (Score:1)
xfs file system (Score:3)
--dave
Re:NEW FILES SYSTEMS??? (Score:4)
I sure would like to know what the news is with SGI porting their XFS journalling file system to Linux. This will be awsome.
From what I've heard, XFS is going to require some heavy-duty changes to the VFS layer to allow for >2GB files on 32-bit systems. (It's also the VFS layer that keeps ext2 from allowing >2GB files, so this may end up killing two birds with one stone.) I don't think the SGI engineers working on XFS for Linux have any code that's fit for public consumption yet anyway.
Doh! (Score:1)
Well maybe we'll do like has happened in the past, convince Linus to add something after the freeze =)
Quick minor releases, long major releases... (Score:4)
A (roughly) once a year release cycle is good for minor releases. There's less temptation to back-port stuff from devel into the stable kernel and therefore less chance of bugs showing up in the stable tree.
The kind of hoopla that happened with 2.2 is good, but it should be reserved for major releases every few years.
What I'm not clear on is how earth-shattering features that justify a bump in major version number and lots of hoopla will ever make it into the devel kernel. Linus is opposed to parrallel development trees (probably with good reason), but I'm not sure how else you introduce big changes withough jeapardizing the quick release cycle.
I think Linus should annoint somebody to start a "3.0 experimental" tree with major new features like clustering. Linus and the regular gang could continue work on 2.5/2.6 for another year, and then synch up with the experimental kernel for 2.7/3.0.
Of course, I'm just a lurker on Linux Kernel, so I don't really have any right to give advice. It's just my idea.
Re:Code freeze --> new release? (Score:1)
Just curious... (Score:1)
But who's PAYING him!?!?! should we be starting a fund?
Re:Quick minor releases, long major releases... (Score:1)
Actually, the 2.2 kernel really did have some major new stuff (if you're like me and don't run the alpha kernels--I need a *stable* development platform and don't care for non-stable kernels) it was the first stable release to have full support for SMP, which is important. And the speed improvements over 2.0.x were pretty nice, too. (Unlike M$ software, sometimes new releases mean FASTER software, not just freeping creaturism)
Aside from that, Linux doesn't *need* to rely on good press. The code stands for itself. That said, if Linux is going to succeed in the corporate arena, it does need to stay in the press, good or bad. So getting in the press is never a bad thing, and it always helps.
I think Linus should annoint somebody to start a "3.0 experimental" tree with major new features like clustering.
Starting a new tree isn't always a good thing. It makes code management much tricker and more difficult. What if someone adds a feature in the new tree, but another feature is added to the old tree that breaks the new feature? Or vice-versa? And lets not forget the possibility of duplication of effort
USB Quickcam (Score:1)
Re:Code freeze --> new release? (Score:1)
neither does support for hpfs. The kernel
won't even compile if you put hpfs in the
kernel and PPP just doesn't work whether you
put it into the kernel or in a module.
I use ppp-2.3.8-14 which is what came
with SuSE 6.2
Of course there will be changes before the
release. Someone would look like a big
moron if PPP was still not working at the
release time.
http://www.netonecom.net/~bbcat/
Re:Just curious... (Score:1)
Re:xfs file system (Score:1)
But then, I'm not a kernel hacker. This was more a question and/or a hunch than offering advice.
FireWire support (Score:2)
When I get that sorted out I will try again. As it does not change anything outside of its own directory apart from a few Makefiles, it could be accepted even into a feature freeze. The homepage for this all is ECLiPt [uni-klu.ac.at], where you can also subscribe to mailing lists.
Re:so? (Score:3)
For
For 1.1 (1.2)
for 1.3 (2.0)
for 2.1 (2.2)
now 2.3 (2.4)
Re:NEW FILES SYSTEMS??? (Score:1)
But that's no worry... as we are getting stable releases more frequently from now on.
BFS, BeFS, NetWare FastFAT (Score:2)
I just saw patches on linux-kernel.
BeFS is used by BeOS (somebody in Japan wrote a
driver for this)
The FENRIS project has a driver for Netware's
local disk filesystems. You could dual-boot
with Netware and Linux, getting at the same
local files.
It is not regular news (Score:1)
Re:Code freeze --> new release? (Score:1)