Linux Kernel 2.2.14

So everyone and their unkle wrote in to tell us that Linux 2.2.14 has officially been released. If your uptime isn't to sacred to ya, it may be worth upgrading. You know where to get the good stuff if ya need it.

Comments

ext3?

[Millennium]

I remember Alan saying at one point that he was considering adding the current ext3 sources into the kernel. Anyone know if he's done this yet, or will that be going into the 2.3 tree?

Re:The importance (or lack thereof) of uptime

[JoeBuck]

For machines behind firewalls that are performing some task without any problems, it's best in many cases to just leave 'em alone and let them rack up the uptime.

On the other hand, for a visible machine with a static IP address, hosting web pages or other advertised services, you have to keep ahead of the script kiddies. But not all machines are in that category, far from it.

New platform introduced with v2.2.14 (S/390)

[tao]

Something that obviously passed many by is that v2.2.14 introduces a new platform; IBM's mainframe series of computers; S/370 and S/390. While it's hard improbably that more than maybe ten or fifteen readers of Slashdot even have seen one (I have; we got an offer to get one, but had no IPI-3 disks for it, and no OS; at that time the port didn't exist yet...), but they are basically very different and cool machines.

Have a look at IBM's homepage and search around for some information on them. They have BANDWIDTH.

This is at least cool, if nothing else. Now if just anyone could port Linux to VAX, things would be chilling.

Uptimes and kernel upgrades.

[delld]

Now that win2000 is supposedly comming out, and it supposedly needs fewer reboots, Linux uptime counters are going to have much more competition. Therefore, I call for hot-swapable kernels! I do not want to stop what I am doing, just to upgrade (or down-grade) my operating system! I want an uptime measured in decades!

Old kernels are still important

[coyote-san]

Old kernels are still important, for several reasons:

1) they are well tested
2) the C library for that kernel is well tested
3) the programs for that library are well tested

the importance of this can't be overemphasized. There are a lot of situations where it's much more important to work with a known quantity than to get the ultimate bit of performance or flexibility.

It's worth noting that one of the most damning complaints against Microsoft as an "enterprise class" OS & application suite is the fact that they have repeatedly demonstrated a cavalier attitude towards making big changes in a way that forces users to upgrade everything to fix a single bug in the kernel (e.g., Win95->Win98) or application (e.g., Office file formats).

That's why Linux, and all real enterprise-ready OSes, allow fairly independent maintenance paths for all major versions of the kernels/libraries/applications. It's a bit more work for the developer, but it's criticial when you're talking about systems which *must* remain up. (E.g., if a hospital's systems go down due to an unexpected bug in an upgraded OS, patients may die. If an airline's systems go down due to an unexpected bug, they can lose millions of dollars in lost bookings and contractual penalties for delays.)

Re:Ahh....

[Eimi Metamorphoumai]

Rob said so. If Rob told you to jump off a bridge would you do it?

I wouldn't be able to get anywhere near it. It would be /.'d to capacity. A total of maybe a foot difference between the height of the bridge and the pile of geeks next to it.

Changelog Info

[mwillis]

FYI - if you want the changelog for 2.2.14, just look at the last 2.2.pre14 kernel changelogs. Linuxtoday has a copy here:

http://linuxtoday.com/story.php3?sn=14481

It is a fairly long list of things. The S/390 port is there. Some nice-sounding bugfixes are there, so I'll probably recompile tonight. Also, supposedly it should now compile fine with gcc 2.95.

Re:The importance (or lack thereof) of uptime

[zmooc]

I disagree with you; my experience is that I only need to reboot if something goes terribly wrong or if I want to upgrade a `core' part of the system. Therefore one can say that operating systems with an average downtime that is rather low either are upgraded a lot, or crash a lot. I think the latter has the greatest influence still.

Off course not all systems run under the same conditions; windows computers are probably more often turned off at night than VMS systems, SunOS is usually used on high-end hardware while Linux often runs on crappy hardware and OpenBSD-systems probably have better admins than Linux-systems (no offense, but most unix-newbies tend to use Linux, not *BSD). But still I dare say that the uptime is a real good measurement for the stability of an operating system.

Apart from that I agree with the fact that one should not fail to upgrade because one wants to get the highest uptime possible. On the other hand, people shouldn't upgrade when there's no need to; if there are no new features/fixes in the new kernel which apply to your system, don't upgrade :)

Check http://www.uptimes.net for a list of uptimes per OS. There are about 500 hosts in the list, so it ought to give a rather clear view of the situation.

Re:Ken Thompson

[Tom Christiansen]

Isn't he the one who says that Linux is a piece of shit? Sounds like a great Slashdot role model to me!

Ken *invented* most of what you know as Unix and C. (It's fun to watch him and Dennis both disavow ownership and point at each other. :-) Without Ken, we wouldn't have Unix, and we probably wouldn't have C. And we most certainly wouldn't have Linux. If Ken said this, then I'm completely certain that he could have backed it up. But I don't recall having read anything by him that referred to Linux so scatologically. Please don't spread gossip and rumor, allowing idle speculation to blossom into bitter invective against a man hte likes of whose genius you seldom meet in one lifetime. Always get the exact quote and context.

[...time passes...]

Alright, here you go. Read this, which I got from IEEE Computer Magazine:

Computer: In a sense, Linux is following in this tradition. Any thoughts on this phenomenon?

Thompson: I view Linux as something that's not Microsoft-a backlash against Microsoft, no more and no less. I don't think it will be very successful in the long run. I've looked at the source and there are pieces that are good and pieces that are not. A whole bunch of random people have contributed to this source, and the quality varies drastically.

My experience and some of my friends' experience is that Linux is quite unreliable. Microsoft is really unreliable but Linux is worse. In a non-PC environment, it just won't hold up. If you're using it on a single box, that's one thing. But if you want to use Linux in firewalls, gateways, embedded systems, and so on, it has a long way to go.

Delving deeper, we have this article by Eric Raymond in Linux Today, in which he clarifies what Ken said, as follows:

The best news, I guess, is that Ken says he didn't intend to write off Linux itself as simply an anti-Microsoft backlash; what he was trying to say was that he believes the recent popularity of Linux in the press is an anything-but-Microsoft phenomenon. He adds ``i very much appreciate the chance to look at available code when i am faced with the task of interfacing to some nightmare piece of hardware'' and that ``i think the open software movement (and linux in particular) is laudable.''

Ken further adds ``i dont see eye-to-eye with microsoft's business practices.'' His original language was rather stronger and more entertaining, but he asked me not to quote that in order to avoid giving Lucent's lawyers heart failure.

The bad news is that Ken still thinks Linux is flaky. I offered to have VA Linux Labs ship him a machine so he could see what a properly tuned modern Linux looks like, but he said he couldn't accept. He adds ``i do believe that in a race, it is naive to think linux has a hope of making a dent against microsoft starting from way behind with a fraction of the resources and amateur labor. (i feel the same about unix.)''

I cited all the case studies and trend curves and statistics you'd expect me to. He didn't respond directly to those, but I hope I at least gave him some things to think about.

Ken did finish by saying ``i must say the linux community is a lot nicer than the unix community. a negative comment on unix would warrent death threats. with linux, it is like stirring up a nest of butterflies.'' (Hm. Butterfly T-shirts, anyone?)

The really bad news, of course, is that Ken was wrong about the volatile and irrational reaction by the members of the Linux community against those who cast aspersions on the current state of apotheosis of Linux--or of the FSF, for that matter. This kind of thing most certainly does happen, as all here can doubtless attest. So much for the good old days.

The importance (or lack thereof) of uptime

[Signail11]

"If your uptime isn't to sacred to ya, it may be worth upgrading."

Uptime should *never* be sacred to any computer user in the sense that preserving a high uptime should not preclude one from installing a neccessary software or hardward upgrade. What is important is that an operating system has the ability to run stably and for extended periods of time such that the use of the computer is not impaired. I've known quite a few users who claim ridiculously high uptimes (ie. > 1 year). The kernel is so out of date that any random script kiddie can grab an exploit or buffer overflow from bugtraq and root the system, obviously not a Good Thing if your computer is running any sort of critical task.

Uptime is just that: a measure of how much time has elapsed since the last reboot of the system. It does not measure any of the following things:
-Superiority of an operating system
-Ability to administer a computer
-Programing skill
-"Eliteness/coolness", whatever that is