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Wonderful World Of Linux 2.4 - Final Candidate
EngrBohn writes "Joe Pranevich has posted the latest & greatest Wonderful World of Linux 2.4 at LinuxToday. 'In the beginning, there was Linus and his 386 ... Several years and many thousands of lines of code later, Linux 2.2 was released ... Linus (and company) continued to hack away at the Linux OS and the 2.4 release of the Linux kernel is nearing completion. Submitted for your approval, this document describes some of the new features in Linux 2.4.'" Helps sort out rumors, half-truths and innuendo. I hope Joe's estimate is conservative on getting CDs shipping with point-four; usually it seems like the distro houses are pretty swift to incorporate.
My current workstation:
/etc/fstab: /var/shm shm defaults 0 0
/dev fs, there's many (interesting) files to play with, the cooles imho being /dev/microcode. You can basically rewrite the binary data built in to your processor. While i dont think 'cat /dev/random > /dev/microcode' would be such a good idea, there's a good page with info on this here
nooky:~$ uname -rmpv
2.3.99-pre4 #4 SMP Thu Mar 30 13:14:58 PST 2000 i686 unknown
I've been using the 2.3 series since 2.3.32, and have had tremendous success with them. Several things to note that _weren't_ in the article:
1) sysvipc has changed. if you use anything that depends on shm, you'll need to add this to your
none
2) Along with the new
--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous
This is a free minix-like kernel for i386(+) based AT-machines. Full
:-)
...)
source is included, and this source has been used to produce a running
kernel on two different machines. Currently there are no kernel
binaries for public viewing, as they have to be recompiled for different
machines. You need to compile it with gcc (I use 1.40, don't know if
1.37.1 will handle all __asm__-directives), after having changed the
relevant configuration file(s).
As the version number (0.01) suggests this is not a mature product.
Currently only a subset of AT-hardware is supported (hard-disk, screen,
keyboard and serial lines), and some of the system calls are not yet
fully implemented (notably mount/umount aren't even implemented). See
comments or readme's in the code.
This version is also meant mostly for reading - ie if you are interested
in how the system looks like currently. It will compile and produce a
working kernel, and though I will help in any way I can to get it
working on your machine (mail me), it isn't really supported. Changes
are frequent, and the first "production" version will probably differ
wildly from this pre-alpha-release.
Hardware needed for running linux:
- 386 AT
- VGA/EGA screen
- AT-type harddisk controller (IDE is fine)
- Finnish keyboard (oh, you can use a US keyboard, but not
without some practise
The Finnish keyboard is hard-wired, and as I don't have a US one I
cannot change it without major problems. See kernel/keyboard.s for
details. If anybody is willing to make an even partial port, I'd be
grateful. Shouldn't be too hard, as it's tabledriven (it's assembler
though, so
Although linux is a complete kernel, and uses no code from minix or
other sources, almost none of the support routines have yet been coded.
Thus you currently need minix to bootstrap the system. It might be
possible to use the free minix demo-disk to make a filesystem and run
linux without having minix, but I don't know...
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I find this has everything to do with the particular distribution's target audience.
For instance, with Mandrake you see shipments of not only the latest stable kernel, but pratically all of the available patches towards the next stable release already applied. Who is Mandrake's target audience? Desktop users - or at least the Desktop/Workstation sector is where you'll find many of the Mandrake installations. Mandrake is known for it's ease-of-use and execellent default window manager settings. I would predict that many of the desktop/gamer/cutting edge-targetted distributions will be shipping with 2.4 shortly after it becomes available.
The more corporate-oriented distributions will quite likely wait until 2.4 has had a chance to stabelize a bit longer, especially the distributions targetted at servers - Redhat for instance, and probably Caldera and Corel as well.
I further predict that the distributions that aren't shipping with 2.4 running by default will at least include a 2.4-compiled kernel available for install at some point during the installation process - not only so that they are not perceived as "behind the pack" but also to get some feedback from their userbase as to where problems have cropped up.
Also bear in mind that XFree 4.0 was released recently, and at this point can't be considered fully stable/complete since many video card drivers have not been released yet, and there has not be enough time to throughly test it. Many distributions will wait for their next point-oh release until after 2.4 and XFree 4.0 have stabilized somewhat
And of course, some distributions like -ahem- Debian will simply wait until the next stable kernel is just around the corner before a release in say... q1 2001 (c:
Ouch! Bruce... put down that stick! I was just kidding... ouch!
-Cycon
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
One of the things that has worried me about this 2.4 freeze was a number of features that were added last minute (during the 2.3.99 series). One of these such features was a multilink implementation by Paul Mackerras.
What was disturbing about this feature add is that several people had been working on other implementations of MLPPP for Linux for some time (including, but not limited to: The PPP Multilink Protocol (MP) for Linux, Chris's Multilink PPP for Linux, and Babylon (by Spellcaster)).
I am particularly touched by Chris Pascoe's e-mail:
What disturbes me is that I wrote Paul, the present PPP driver maintainer for Linux, asking him if he would like help testing his new MLPPP code before 2.4 final and if he has a new PPP daemon capable of using his new driver. I, and Chris Pascoe are still waiting for the reply. This seams very counter-productive to the open-source model of development. The last time I mailed Chris he said that we was going to get one of his friends to go knocking on Paul's door at the college where he resides to see if he is still alive...
Anybody heard more on PPP?
Anybody seen anymore recently added code during freeze time?
-AP