Interviews at Linux Conference Australia

Netsnipe writes "In a few days time, DebianPlanet will be covering Linux Conference Australia (LCA) being hosted at the University of New South Wales by Linux Australia from January 17-20 in Sydney. The timing of this year's LCA has been coincidentally close to the release of the 2.4 Linux kernel two weeks ago and it is the first major gathering of important Linux developers of the year. In the spirit of the Debian project, we at DebianPlanet want to make our interviewing process as open as the Debian distribution is with their own reporting and processes. To further this aim we are inviting everyone to submit their own questions to our interviewees and share a major opportunity to learn where the Linux community is heading towards. Our question submission system is now open to all at our website. "

Comments

The one question I'd like answered...

[_xeno_]

I'd really, really like to know when Linus and the other kernel developers are going to buckle down and rewrite Linux so that it uses a pre-emptive scheduler. Round-robin really doesn't cut it for servers or desktops. I'd love to see Linux 3.0 be based just on this direction - altering the kernel so that it uses a preemptive scheduler.

To answer the almost inevitable "do it yourself" comments, yes, I have the source - but playing with the scheduler in this way is a major overhall. It will probably break just about every other portion of the kernel, since the kernel is designed around a round-robin scheduler. The scheduler is really the heart of any kernel anyway - changing the scheduler would require Linux developers to sit down and redesign everything so that every portion of the kernel is based around the new scheduler. Syncronization issues become the main problem. To do this "right" Linux developement on new technology basically has to stop until the scheduler is fully implemented and designed.

To turn to a trollish tack, Microsoft has had a pre-emptive scheduler ever since NT was released. OS/2 beat them to it, and VAX beats OS/2. Almost all modern operating systems, minus Linux (I dunno about the BSDs), use a pre-emptive scheduler. A pre-emptive scheduler is ideal for both server and desktop environments. It's really sad that Linux still uses a round-robin scheduler.

The main reason to use a pre-emptive is that everything actually moves faster - to use a web server as an example, say the web server has an HTTP daemon running and some other CPU intensive process running. For the time being, nobody is using the web server - it's sleeping, waiting for a connect. The CPU intensive process is given a 200ms time slice to crunch on numbers - half way through that, a connection comes in to the web server. On pre-emptive schedulers, the web server is then scheduled in preference of the CPU intensive process. On Linux, the CPU intensive process regains it's timeslice, and after its through, the webserver can handle the process. What's wrong with that? It takes longer for the webserver to handle requests. Some ASCII art to demonstrate:

[other process]<Data comes in>[other process][http served] - Linux's scheduler
[other process]<Data comes in>[http served][other process] - Pre-emptive scheduler

What's the difference? The HTTP gets served more quickly on the pre-emptive scheduler, while the other process really loses no time (assuming it would take another timeslice after the HTTP is served to complete it's task). This time can really add up on various systems - especially with more than two processes.

Re:Do these events show the media is too important

[SquadBoy]

I don't think it is so much that the media is driving anything in the Linux community. I think we have some very smart people (MadDog comes to mind) using the media to tell their story. Many of us would like to make a living working with Linux and the only way to grow the market share so this can come true is to use the media because while we may not care what anyone thinks our PHBs do. I think if anything it is making things a bit better. Look at the recent kernel release and how Linus is trying to assure that it does not break right after being released. I think all in all these gentlemen are responding to the media in a very healthy way and using them to get our goals. IMO a very good thing.

Do these events show the media is too important...

[Lover's Arrival, The]

...for the Linux Community? Hi. I was wondering, how important is the press to Linux, and the dissemination of information? I (speaking as a newbie;-), have noticed that everybody seems to be getting really paranoid about what the press thinks about them, and the media in general! But, only a few years ago, it didn't really matter, because everyone who used Linux was involved in the development side, and was very knowledgible, right? Now, the Linux community is becoming more like those of other OS's as it gets larger, and it is regressing to the mean (A term I learned in Higher Mathematics, yuk!).

So it would seem that the media is becoming more important to the Linus Community, and so events like this are starting to appear. Is it healthy that the Linux Development be driven by the press and users? I thought that the success of Linux was due to the fact that it was developed for programmers by programmers, without referance to the media. I'm very interested in this. Thanks! ;)