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Preview Of Linux 2.5
mojo-raisin writes: "Linux Weekly News is providing a report of the 'Linux 2.5 Kernel Summit,' a gathering of 65 core kernel hackers. Notes are provided on the first day of session, which covers changes required to make Linux more capable on high-performance machines and more user-friendly with hot pluggable devices." 2.5 looks close on the horizon, especially now that Linus has donned a funny paper hat. Better get your feature requests in soon;)
That's intentional. It makes it harder for his wife to Judo-flip him into bed when he's in deep-hack mode. : )
Welcome to Slashdot where the deranged moderators rule.
I'm already running Linux 7.1.
And puppies. Dont forget the puppies.
I think it is great that I can read about Linux kernel hackers debating how to best implement hotpluggable devices and optimize block writes in the file system. I can get raw technical detail if I want it. And I get to see the arguments that go on over controversial design decisions.
I just get a kick out of it. :)
Could it be that those who moderated the second post up are not the same people who moderated his first one down?
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Ok, so some people are daring enough to try XFS. How about IBM's port of JFS to Linux? Has anyone gotten this working, and if so, how well? I've looked at the READMEs on it, but I, as someone who's not intimately familiar with journalling filesystems, don't know if it's ready for prime time, or even for testing.
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Why would Steve Austin run to Microsoft campus?
To stop Bill Gates before he bribes dr. Wells into 'upgrading' his bionics with WinCE, of course.
Wrong Austin. Bionic man not wrestler.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
So, what do you think needs to be improved in the kernel to address typical desktop user concerns?
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Yeah, but gleaning any information from the
BIOS is a crap shoot. Lots of BIOS's are
buggy about reporting, undocumented/underdocumented on calls, and
generally unreliable. Most manufacturers seem
barely test their boards before kicking them out
the door. They figure if they can do the handoff
to the OS then good enough. And troubleshooting
this stuff is a frustrating.
----- obSig
It already does work.
How about improving boot up time?
The bootup time is about the same as that of windows but you don't need to boot as often :-)
Including the bootup logo patch?
You mean the kind of logo windows displays at boot? It already exists. But I find it kind of useless.
How about getting DMA mode working on all the IDE controllers out there and having them intelligently configure themselves (I've lost more than one disk to hdparm tweaking).
How about getting all HD manufacturers to properly support the ATA specs?
How about making my mp3's not get choppy when my system starts swapping? (short of needing to apply rtlinux patches and nice --19'ing mpg123).
Huh? ever heard of buffer? (-b switch for mpg123). It's never choppy if you use a 512k buffer. And you don't need to nice it to -19 either.
How about including a kflushd that's smart about laptops?
What is that supposed to mean?
I can't imagine that the same schedule() used to handle Apache and Oracle would do the same job as running GNOME..
Why not? Seems to work pretty well right now. (same with windows, btw).
Why not try ditching LILO for GRUB?
Huh? And how the hell are you gonna boot Linux? That's like saying "why not try ditching NT boot loader".
___
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
If you look at most of the rejected patches it becomes pretty obvious that the #1 reason for rejection is that the patch wasn't submitted until it became large, touched other files, etc. Linus seems like having patches submitted that fix a specific thing doing this with a minimal amount of code that can easily be integrated into the kernel source. If the patch *needs* to be large than a discussion usually pops up on the kernal mailing list and decisions are made. Lets be realistic - most patches are rejected when they are too big, touch too many files, etc... Look at the SGI patches for Apache - same problem. It takes too much time to read the patches, make sure everything is ok with them, and work around the problems.
a) subscribe to linux-kernel mailing list
b) read list
c) work on small patches that get asked for
d) submit patch, learn your code sucks, redo code, resubmit
Least that seems to be the way most people do it :).
Hotplugging is all about userfriendlyness, both on the server and on the desktop. Imagine hotplugging USB, Firewire, etc. to your desktop.
;-)).
However I think the Linux kernel (and just the kernel, which is a very small part of the complete system) is currently providing many friendly features to the desktop user: multimedia support (soundcards, TV cards, 3D acceleration support through the DRI, scanners), plug and play support (USB is supposed to be very good in 2.4, however I haven't got any devices to test with; isapnp is part of the kernel, PCI pnp framework available).
Another thing that will probably be part of the 2.5 series are the low latency patches. Amongst other things these patches enable a smooth multimedia experience (gee, I'm sounding like a marketing droid here
However most of the desktop stuff is to be implemented in userspace: X+KDE or X+Gnome is a good start.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
Please tell me that linux isn't going to adopt the idea of having a "core" team like the BSD's do ...
Linux isn't going to adopt the idea of having a "core" team like the BSD's do.
This meeting just speeds up the exchange of idea's. See it as the linux kernel mailing list on acid. Bringing 65 people together just works so much faster than sending email to a list.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
Please tell me that linux isn't going to adopt the idea of having a "core" team like the BSD's do ...
Linux has always had a "core" team. Linus is the leader, Alan his second in command, etc. Nothing goes into the kernel unless Linus sprinkles holy penguin pee on it. But you are still free to write your own code/modifications and release it yourself.
The difference is this. If you release a forked version of BSD you are in violation of copyright. If you release a forked version of Linux you are in violation of etiquette (and common sense).
"The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance." -Thomas Jefferson
Hm, my raid's running a little slow, and I smell something funny...should I look in the machine room? Nah...
...
/dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target3/lun0 on fire, deploying miniature firemen
/proc/fires/0 under control
# dmesg | tail
raid5: switching cache buffer size, 4096 --> 1024
raid5: switching cache buffer size, 1024 --> 4096
reiserfs: checking transaction log (device 09:00)
Using r5 hash to sort names
ReiserFS version 3.6.25
devfs: devfs_register(): device already registered: "lvm"
kernel: WARNING: device
raid5: marking md0 disk3 bad
firemand:
raid5: marking md0 disk3 good
Now that's what I call high availability!
Well actually they could base their code on the linux printer driver:
/usr/src/linux-2.2.19/drivers/char/lp.c
Wich seems to be able to detect fires:
} else if (!(status & LP_PERRORP)) {
if (last != LP_PERRORP) {
last = LP_PERRORP;
printk(KERN_INFO "lp%d on fire\n", minor);
;-)
(And I have to say something else here so that the lameness filter doesn't filter my joke. The lameness filter is lame.)
I refuse to browse at 2+ just to see a handful of posts that others have judged pithy or informative or that simply default to 2. For example, at the time I write this, there are:
So if I want to surf and get signal I can shoot to a 3 and see less than a tenth of the total comments. Or I can use my moderator points on removing the crap, then browse at 1 and see a majority of the posts. Under these circumstyances you tell me why it is better to pump up an already modded post to a three and not dump some AC 'First post. J00 4R3 411 d1CK5.' to -1.
Welcome to the abuse of anominity, the rejection of civic responsibility, and the corruption of community in an online setting. This spend more time modding up than modding down sounds good but imo doesn't do well in practice.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Just wondering, did you turn on soft updates for your FreeBSD filesystems? I switch from Linux to FreeBSD couple months ago and also noticed much slower disk/filesystem performance. As soon as I turned on soft updates (tunefs -n enable /dev/ad1s2a, etc), the difference was amazing. Dunno why the install had it turned off by default.
My Linux system was running 2.2.17 with ext2fs. I kind of wonder how Reiserfs compares now, but I'm loving FreeBSD so much I have no desire to go back and find out. ;-)
Say hello to zMac.
Basically, change Linux from Unix clone to something more along the lines of BeOS, MacOS, or WinNT (but done right, of course
I don't think that is what Linus wants, though - if he did, I don't think he'd care about getting Linux to run on all that heavy iron.
IMHO, all the DE's we have right now are just big hacks...yes, Gnome and KDE are rather sophisticated hacks, but a "true" desktop isn't layer after layer of services running on a kernel, its a more thought out and planned OS. You make sacrifices - you might only go down to one widget set, one way of doing audio, etc.
Unix is great - as a server. For a hacker desktop, it definately is pretty nice. But we're leaving out 85% of humanity by making just us coders happy
--------------------------
Hasn't XFree86 4.x reorganized to split the device drivers from the higher level X stuff? Maybe you could do it already, but if not I can't imagine that it'd be to much work to allow applications other than X talk directly to the drivers.
Do you have any idea if this is already possible?
Which is wonderful until something goes wrong. For instance, one of the Macs in my department at work suffers from frequent lockups and crashes. It's probably a hardware or driver problem, but since Mac OS doesn't generate error logs, no one knows what the problem might be. The Mac experts are forced to fall back on the wipe-the-drive-and-reinstall style of support.
If some Linux distributions would like to do more to hide unnecessary diagnositic text from desktop users, that's great! Let them use redirects and splash screens, but there's no reason to stop printing those diagnostics somewhere. When something goes wrong, those error messages will make repairs so much easier.
"Be Happy or Die." -- AoN
Named pipes won't allow me to give my machine native ESD (or whatever mixer you like) support.
Well X *could* be the video card driver if it could takeover /dev/fb. See my wish #1.
Software suspend used to be in the -ac kernels, but it mysteriously disappeared.
I know about the issues regarding PCSP, but this is a wishlist, dammit!
There are no per-app capabilities, AFAIK, just system-wide hard limits. This is not what I want. It's also not widespread enough that it's possible to run no services as root.
--------
Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.
instead of having to ask, "What happens if Linus and Alan get hit by a bus?" we can simply ask, "What happens if a bomb goes off at the Linux Kernel Summit."
Larry Ellison can take out the garbage...
People may ask how much M$ is paying me to say this. Let me tell you: nothing.
I get options instead.
Obviously, if Oracle really cared about these changes, they'd make them themselves and submit the code along with the ideas. There's nothing wrong with a version of the Linux kernel that adds features specific Oracle, it's up to Linus to decide whether these changes are #ifdef'd into the official kernel.
Unfortunately, Linus has been known to make incredibly stupid decisions. For instance, he refuses to add a kernel debugger because he thinks that real programmers don't need a debugger, and all it will do is reduce the quality of the code because programmers will (somehow) suddenly stop caring about good design and just write a bunch of hacks instead. Yes, I know it's absurd, but that's exactly what he thinks.
--
Lord Nimon
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Actually, you are completly wrong and ignoring the fact that due to their more open developement process *BSD is "faster" since you can get a new current Kernel (and OS) every day (Or with anon-CVS every few hours...) and don't have to wait for Linus or Alan to anounce a new (test-)version.
SeeACPI, last I checked was still very much a WIP on Linux. Mind you, also from what I've read it's horridly complex.
:), you may turn your computer off when you leave work for the night and turn it on in the morning (Yes, you could power save - see comment 1)
:)
The bootup time may be the same as Windows, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be better. When you're a desktop user (note the thread topic
The logo patch does exist, that's why I suggested it be included. Some people like watching the kernel probe for non-existant IDE controllers and watch it complain about resetting buses on startup. Some of us don't care anymore (they've watched it boot, they know it'll get there).
As far as your comment about ATA with IDE, so long as humans are making hardware, humans will need to fix hardware problems in software after the hardware is made.
Putting a big buffer on mpg123 doesn't solve the problem of too much IO to actually shovel the audio to the soundcard in a timely fashion.
The rest of your comments don't warrant replies, no offense, but I think you realize that.
the lilo/grub issue is up to the dist packagers
I don't recall the article anymore, but this was once on /. Some big patches came in and Linus insisted that they be broken down into smaller more logical units (instead of the big all-encompassing glob of code it was) and some people got very offended.
You wonder why X is taking up e.g. 70 MB of memory? Maybe because that includes one or even several mappings of your video card's memory! If you have a 64 MB card, mapping that memory into your process space is going to make it look like that process is taking up 64 MB of memory. And X is often assigned CPU usage that really would be designated to its clients, e.g. moving a window around causes (on poorly-accelerated chipsets) a large jump in CPU usage, even though you're really moving some client's window.
Granted, X isn't all that pretty, especially when you talk Xlib with it, but it has proven itself to be a highly capable (and well-documented) architecture for doing just about anything with graphics. It runs on an iPAQ with room to spare, is fast (with the appropriate acceleration extensions e.g. Xv), and has already done all the dirty work with direct hardware interaction for you.
or else they might publish a report with a laundry list of defects compared to Windows NT 3.5. B^)
Not just any kittens, though. Bonsai kittens!
kickin' science like no one else can,
my dick is twice as long as my attention span.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
Linux will start losing market share.
This has been said before, but it needs to be reiterated. Linux does not have 'market share'. Linus & Friends do not make money (directly) by writing the code that goes into the kernel. Thus, Linux does not have to worry about losing 'market share'. What do the kernel hackers care if people aren't using their code. I would assume that most of them are thinking only of themselves when they write the code they do.
OTOH, commercial software vendors aren't necessarily writing applications that they will use. Since everyone here likes to talk about Microsoft, I'll use them as an example. How many people at Microsoft offices do you think are running around using a 30fps digital camera? How many of them do you think use ICS to set up a Win98 machine as a router? I would even doubt that most of them use Win98/ME at work. They'd use some really high-end camera for digital movies. They'd use an expensive (Cisco?) router. They'd be using Win2000 by now. These are programmers and managers who have thousands of dollars at their disposal. These are not home users looking for a $1000 PC to surf the web.
Home users are very different from programmers. Think 80 year old woman who wants to send mail to grandson and 30 year old techie that has to write the software that allows her to do that. These programmers depend on user feedback because they don't know exactly what the users want like the FreeSoftware hackers know exactly what they want when they write their code. If they don't get feedback, they have to guess what the users want. This will not always work, either.
So, Linux will not lose market share. It does not have any to begin with. The code hackers are writing code for themselves and it just so happens that it's what others are looking for, too, so they give it away. These code hackers do not need to worry if others aren't using their software because they did not write it for others in the first place.
kickin' science like no one else can,
my dick is twice as long as my attention span.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
If we want a better desktop version of Linux, we should be looking at dumping the huge layer that is X and the Window Manager, and expanding the Framebuffer into a real, accelerated video driver implmentation.
;)
GTK+ and Qt already have framebuffer implmentations, so it's not an imposible to think that X could be droped in favour of a faster, neater, more direct video system. There are a lot of things that X does well (Like network transparency), but then there are a lot of things that X doesn't do well when you put it on a single user, desktop machine. Things like changing resolution on the fly is something that X just can't do, not to mention the various ugly hacks to do things like direct video rendering, video input, font handling etc.
Move X out of the picture for desktop users and Linux becomes a more attractive proposition for home users.
You may all now flame me about X
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Have done for years - provided you've got more than one resolution configured in your XF86Config. If you're talking about color depth, then, yes, XFree has problems (but not all X servers do)
Yup, but as you say: Provided they're preconfigured & you can't change colour depth with XFree86, and lets face it, how many Linux do you know who don't run XF86 as their X server?
Changing to a resolution you havn't thought to configure, or changing your graphics card under X, is a pain in the ass, even with tools such as XFConfigurator or xconfig. It also doesn't solve the problem that X is big, ugly, slow, and not really suitable for a desktop user. My point is, maybe we should look at dumping X completly.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
I think one of the big issues facing the 2.5 developers will be how many more security features should go in. In particular, should any of the NSA code be accepted? I haven't formed a strong opinion on this subject.
I am not a lawyer.
And that aint bad, is it?
I'm curious what the major objections to incorporating GGI into the mainstream kernel were? It always seemed like a good idea to me, and I never saw an objection that wasn't immediately shown invalid when the discussion was raging way back. What did Linus and the other developers not like about it?
Search OSS project hosters like Sourceforge.net for a project that meets your interests, check the mailing list archive if the project is active and level is ok for you, subscribe to the mailing list and talk to the developers about the features you'd like to see in the project.
One of the best things about GRUB is you can just put a new kernel on the filesystem. No more needing to run a program when installing a new kernel. No more unbootable systems because you forgot, and LILO is looking in the wrong sectors of the disk.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Remember that XFS is a fairly maure journeling FS, compared to Reiserfs which started for Linux.
..... :-(
I've been playing with XFS (in Wolverine), and XFS rocks!
Grab a tarball/patches from ftp://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/download/
Now if only knfsd would play nice
The same is true in BSD, except as other respondents have pointed out Linus' opinion is the only opinion that matters, which is (IMHO) bad.
With FreeBSD the control is spread amongst a bunch of hackers, any one of them can review and commit the patch to the CVS tree, and if you are good enough they will give you CVS commit privaledges.
In fact, if your patch is useful or fixes broken code its more likely to make it in freebsd than it is in linux, given Linus often will refuse large patches.
This is not to say that poor quality patches are accepted, its just that your work is more likely to be recognised and accepted in the BSD world than it is in the Linus world.
It appears that major revisions (point releases) to the Linux kernel are made periodically. in FreeBSD the system is routinely enhanced and modified, and everyone can get access to the committed patches with a simple cvsup.
imagine how high the noise to signal ratio would be if any random person could go.
65 is a nice number, those that are there are focused on the linux kernel.
Ummm... can you provide an example? Then I'll give you a reason :)
Now this really shows your complete and utter ignorance! All version numbers grow without bounds. Only TeX convertex against Pi and Metafont against e. Moron! ;-)
So in other words you want X, but you would just
rather call it "framebuffer".
There is nothing slow about X on my hardware. The
only valid complaint other than "X is old" is that you can't change color depths without a
restart, and X render extention still needs work.
There aree a few, namely full acpi (said to be ready in 2.6 or later 2.4 releases), Alsa sound system replacing OSS/lite, and maybe improved video4linux support.
Linux isn't windows, man, you don't always have to upgrade it every time a new kernel comes out in order to obtain desired performance. (ok, I'm ragging a bit much on Windoze, I admit). From a linux box:
A year and a day! Woohoo! (pardon me, I hadn't realized until nowThis machine is just rock solid, and a fairly busy web server as well (the load average looks pretty good, though, eh? :). There's no need for me to even touch it. Running a number of linux boxes here, and very rarely do I worry about upgrading kernels--only on the rare ocassion that I need to support some new hardware, and often that only entails compiling a new kernel module and inserting it.
Explaining why the hell you have to take about *umpteen* hours in downtime upgrading kernels every so often...
Hrmph. Now this, I don't get at all. Why would a kernel upgrade cause "umpteen hours downtime?" You compile it, let LILO know about it, reboot, and assuming you haven't fsck'd up, your downtime is measured in seconds.
A tad overbearing of them, eh? I'm wondering what sort of resource support they will be pledging to see these enhancements made in a timely fashion, and what sort of strings will we attached, if any.
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
its intersting to see how much the focus seems to be on providing better support in the kernal for large server features, instead of making the experiance of using linux on a normal desktop box easier and more efficient.
Hmm, mea culpa. The first two I checked seemed to be wrongly ported. (I was checking some source for FreeBSD Linux differences, but it seems the Linux source had errors already, which were assumed to be FreeBSD linux differences)
E.g. somebody had declared mode_t as 16-bit.
I'll noted your email addr. In the unlikely event that checking them reveals such beasts.
Sorry again.
Maybe more something for a major (3.0) change, but:
why do a lot of syscalls under Linux still have 16-bit parameters?
Somehow I got the impression that Linux is moving towards ReiserFS, and now I'm hearing about this XFS? Is Reiserfs doomed? Will XFS be better than the XFL?
Eh? You don't HAVE to download the newest kernel. There ARE individuals who LIKE to download the latest and greatest and play with it and they are invaluable as aiding in the debugging effort. Sure, linux could go all cloistered and slow like *BSD and only release the occassional new update, but then, this is slow precisely because there aren't thousands of users helping find the bugs.
The BSD system works for a slow-developing system but it really isn't keeping up with the fast pace of hardware development the way linux is. Someone buys a brandnew video card, wants to take advantage of it. Will they stand a better chance of that with linux or *BSD in the near future? They will with linux because within a couple weeks, a new kernel with support for that card will be released and those early adopters get to make use of their new hardware NOW as opposed to months from now.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Hey, by opening your mouth, you brought it on yourself. Even a fish wouldn't get into trouble if he kept his mouth shut.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
What about Having Linux, no longer being just a kernel and define an userland programs.
I didn't see anything about "Windows XP" in the Kernel summit. So, it would be COMPLETELY OFFTOPIC.-
-----------------------------------------------
You think Bill Gates is evil?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I had the privilege of hearing Margaret Thatcher speak once. Paraphrasing due to bad memory, she said "A committee is the absence of leadership."
While I someday hope to develop the skill to participate in discussions at this level, letting my dumb butt in the room would amount to a tremendous timewaste.
BTW, for those of us FNGs (Frickin' New Guys) who'd have entry level understanding of what is going on, and would like to do some Open Source for the fun and edification, where do I start?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
If XP gave me head, I would gladly go out and buy another computer to put it on.
BIOS? Well, BeOS does this. There are two handy functions in the BeOS API:
Returns 1 if the computer is on. If the computer isn't on, the value returned by this function is undefined.
Returns the temperature of the motherboard if the computer is currently on fire. If the computer isn't on fire, the function returns some other value.
You'll find the functions in the Be Book.
Are you kidding... While the 2.5 talks are going on, at the rate their releasing kernels, 2.7 will be out while they speak about 2.5.
They just released 2.4.3 yesterday didn't they, I can see someone fscking up and overlapping by releasing 2 kernels on the same day...
I'll stick with the BSD's thank you
Instead of releasing something every week or month or whatever, I think the developers of Linux should make it a quarterly process, and release kernels with a slew of things fixed or added. It seems everytime something comes out in the market (new USB device, new anything) they rev up a new release and fire it out.
This (in my opinion, since I'm entitled to it whether or not you mod this down) makes Linux look like such a novelty to business managers who don't understand tech, but sign purchase orders for the geeks who do buy equipment.
Explaining why the hell you have to take about *umpteen* hours in downtime upgrading kernels every so often becomes such a hassle. At least with BSD fixes are easy, and releases aren't done everytime someone *thinks* their new revision is revolutionary enough to release another current.
Just my two cents on the Lnux side of things.
csh-2.04# uname -a
FreeBSD ritalin.deficiency.org i386
movie starz
360 degrees of Karma
Didn't see much discussion of typical desktop users concerns ( except for the mouse). This seems to be adisturbing trend in Linux development.
Nobody cares, stick on the topic at hand.
You stupid bastard, you don't have no arms left. It's just a flesh wound.
Fast, non-X-based 2D (GGI) and 3D (??) graphics control. Should be handled by X11, not the kernel.
Internal PC-speaker driver. Their already is an internal speaker driver. I've used one since 2.0x
Some mechanism to eliminate the need to run various services as root (Capabilities, ACLs, LIDS' mechanism, etc). Security alert, common users using root capable services that could possibly damage your computer.
You stupid bastard, you don't have no arms left. It's just a flesh wound.
This is about linux kernel development, not a sales brochure for microsoft products. Additionally, I do not care if XP washes my car and gives me head, any o/s that deletes my files simply because it "thinks" I should not thave them, will never be installed on any machine I own or support.
Not really, you can released a forked BSD, you just may not use BSD's logo/name for this, unless they give you permission.
Same for Linux, too, Linus can prevent people from using Linux's name.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
That's funny, you rip on the moderators and they mod you up and call it insightfull. Your opinion is your opinion and your right to have one, I just find it funny that your first was a troll and your second, beacuse it said "hey, mod me down I don't care." they mod you up, proof that once again that the moderators are crack heads, and germans love david hasselhof! ---
--God, guns, guts The staple diet of religious nuts
Nice moderation point, ARCHville, or whoever else "has it in for me." A message stating perfectly valid summary of the article gets marked down to a troll because the parent, himself a troll, doesn't like his vague philosophical argument treaded upon.
mwtr / THIS SIG HAS BEEN PRAYED OVER AND MAY BE USED AS A POINT OF CONTACT (ACTS 19:12)
However this "meeting" makes your wonder if this is a community project anymore, there are hundreds of kernel hackers out there, who have in some way contributed code to the kernel however only 65 get to attend this meeting ..
Of course it's still a community project, and yes, there are a lot of people out there that have contributed to writing the kernel for our favorite OS, and no, they weren't invited to this meeting. However, I do see a need to not allow any Tom, Dick and Harry to show up to some of these get togethers. I don't see much progress being made when you have 300 people in a room together all screaming about his or her own agenda... no, you have to trim it down a bit if you really want things to get done. I completely understand where these guys are coming from.
Don't let the lusers get you down.
Windows lamer? See, this is flame bait, and why these fools use AC logons, so they can't be modded down. At least I take the hits when I do something deemed flameable or OT.
You can't fight ideas with bullets - NSF Terrorist Leader, Level One of Deus Ex
Linux IO has always seemed slow to me.
On large file ops, the update daemon starts pegging the CPU and the writes steadily slow down to a trickle. Example ... I backup my MP3 collection (about 5 gigs) over 100Mb every so often onto my gateway box, running Linux with ext2 file systems. The transfer takes at least twice as long on Linux as it used to when FreeBSD was running on it, not to mention the Linux box becomes pretty much unusable during this period.
Do the journaling FSs, e.g. ReiserFS, make the update daemon, and so this problem, go away? Will tweaking update help?
You're really Alan Cox having a wizz on us, right?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
I'm impressed, I wish Linux programmers knew as much about designing UI interfaces as you do. Seriously. For example, Gtk+ doesn't have proper modal dialog box support. Ever try to create a dialog box with Gtk+ that disables only it's parent window? You can't. Consider yourself lucky you "learned" yourself some advanced topics, such as modal dialog boxes. ;)
it's gonna be half as good as kernel v 5.0
We've been over and over and over again...
Moving from X windows to FB (frame buffer) you'll loose:
1. Hardware acceleration. Sure, you can write hardware acceleration, but how many people here do know how to write hardware acceleration for the various chips?
2. You'll loose 3D, DGA(1/2), Xv, XDND, and zillion libraries which are using Xlib and other extensions. Want to write them with the frame buffer? please, be my guest. Just tell me which year you're going to have 1.0 version
3. You'll loose all X applications support that needs X - think commercial applications that doesn't give a fuck that you like Frame Buffer. Think about commercial vendors who port their applications from other unices to Linux and vice versa.
X is fine! You should start reading some info about X, why it shows in "top" that it takes lots of resources (hint - it's not what you think).
I like X, and I like the extensions that are being written of it. I like DRI, I like Anti Aliasing in QT, and I like the Xv extensions which let me watch full screen TV (on 1600x1280x32bpp) with my ancient TV tuner and lets me watch DVD's with Xine.
Hetz (Heunique)
There are lots of us. And we're all different.
We're not all the same moderator; we're not all rabid Linux-zealots; we're not all Windows trolls. Some Linux users don't use Napster. Some Windows users don't like software patents. Some of us are probably Buddhist Libertarians who aren't vegetarians and like to program GTK+ apps when they're not using IE to browse the web on their Windows 2000 box.
If any of you ever think that we're all the same, you need to pay more attention to the flame-fest that goes on whenever any topic with two sides is muttered. (And realize that you are still. only seeing the the vocal minority of Slashdot users.)
I'm using the CVS tree version, just because the patches tend to run a bit too far behind for my tasts.
Here are the instructions for grabbing the tree via CVS:
Linux XFS CVS Instructions
I really hope Linus changes his opinion on the relative urgency of merging XFS. It is something that I think the kernel could really benefit from, given the kinds of things people are using Linux for these days. I'd like to see it in 2.5.x ASAP, and hopefully backported to 2.4.x.
Eh?
Any Linux or BSD user can get the source to the kernel they use. They can change the local version. If they are on the BSD core team they can change the global version. If they are Linus they can change the global version. If they aren't the core team or Linus they can send a patch to the core team or Linus and hope it is appreciated. Or they can fork the code (it happened to BSD at least three times, about zero tomes for Linux).
I don't know anyone on the FreeBSD core team, I've never met any of them (I know some of the OpenBSD core, I've met Linus). I had a problem with the FreeBSD USB stack. I tracked it down and fixed it. I used diff to make a patch file. I ran send-pr to report the bug, I attached the patch. Some automated software assigned me a bug id (kern/17815). Some time later I received the following message:
So my change didn't exactly make it in, but as far as I can tell only because I wasn't the first to make it. Somebody actually looked at my bug report, and checked to see if it was fixed. I have no doubt that if it wasn't they would have used my patch, or fixed it in a better way.
So why do you think the core team hinders BSD's growth? Does Linus hinder Linux's growth in the same way?
Or in other words, yeah, sure, Linux is great, but why do you assume BSD sucks when you have no damn idea how it works?
If you want to bitch about BSD, go install it. Don't make uninformed complaints about it. It's just as bad as all the articles about how hard Linux is to use written by a bunch of Windows users who have never given Linux a shot.
X's problem is a *lack* of primitives, not that they are too low level. This results in people who want to do something being forced to draw the entire thing in a local image buffer and thus losing all hardware acceleration.
In my opinion the client-server model is much easier to program and debug and can be FASTER than direct calls due to the reduction in context switches (since many graphics calls are easily batched together). The fact that it makes it trivial to get network transparency is just gravy and not the main reason for X's design.
X's insane flaws are the extremely bad graphics interface that ruins the client-server model by requiring synchronous communication, and a mess they created by making the window manager be a process.
Graphics should be powerful (not necessarily high-level) and should work without the program having to "inquire" anything about the device. For instance you should pick a color by specifying a r,g,b triple and the server decides what actual color it can display and does it.
The window manager should be scrapped and all programs control exactly all the pixels drawn on the screen. "consistency" (a very highly overrated thing, in my opinion) can be done by toolkit libraries, the same way they make buttons and menus consistent.
Both of these things require such significant changes that the result will not be X.
Great ideas! When should I expect to see patches from you, and where will you post them?
* Fast, non-X-based 2D (GGI) and 3D (??) graphics control.
Well, we already have
What I'd like to see is a DMA subsystem that allows you to allocate large areas of physical memory (optionally mapped through the AGP GART)--something the rest of the *nix's can adopt.
Write the Linux kernel in Java.
The benefits are obvious - it will be cross-platform and garbage collection will be taken care of.
--
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Umnh...
I don't think you have the BSD license correct. I believe that anyone is allowed to release a fork of the BSD kernel, but that they are also able to release a binary-only fork. And to add additional license restrictions.
BSD is more free for the current developer. GPL is more free for the past & future developer. There are arguments in favor of each. However, I prefer the GPL, partially because I want the future changes to contiue to be available.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Tell me they are going to fix the memory management!
Right now, the kernel takes a constant 1G of virtual space. Which means any process can only take 3G of memory. Really annoying if you acutally have 4G or more of memory. And worse, the virtual address space is fragmented enough that the largest contiguous piece of space (say for a dynamic SINGLE array) is 2G. that really sucks.
I hear they are going to employ OpenBSD-like methods. Does this include thinking of Virtual Address space as just another resource, like memory used to be before VM? I've come to realize that VM separates the allocation of the address space and the physical space, when without it, they were bound together. Now, before it, contigous memory was scarce on a even lightly used system. So the big things that 2.5 needs to consider is good use of high memory (like putting the kernel in there for good), and actually making an allocation scheme for Address space, as that is still a vital resource that cannot be wasted.
$.02
"Did you wash your hands? You don't know where Linux has been."
Lycestra
Well i dont think its as much a troll / flame as much as a offtopic opinion or flame bait.
..
.Net threads that happend earlier for that :)
This new headline is about the features that might or might not make it into the next rebirth of the linux kernel, and posibly even discussion about linux development might be in place..
But 'WindowsXP is more stable then Win9x' is no where near relevant to the kernel development discussion that this news item encompases. I think thats where you got confused about the modding
Thus it is flame bait, since it tries to bring the Windows9x vs Linux discussion into this thread, whereas this thread is not ment for such discussion. Try the WindowsXP /
-- Chris Chabot
"I dont suffer from insanity, i enjoy every minute of it!"
I mean, I'm running Linux 7.2! These guys are behind the times!
sup
Perhaps the example was poorly chosen, or poorly worded. The problem mentioned is very real, though. Trying to distinguish between transient and permanent errors, HBA and device errors, or HW-RAID controller and actual-disk errors, is hard enough even when you have access to all of the available information - e.g. sense data for SCSI. I know this because I wrote one of the very first UNIX-based multi-path disk driver extensions, and nearly went insane dealing with this exact problem. Linux makes this problem even worse by basically throwing away most of the useful information at various points along the way from adapter driver to SCSI mid-layer to generic block-device layer, etc. I'm glad they're finally doing something about it.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Lots of good points.. I guess I have totally given up on surfing at anything less than 1. This means I don't see the vast majority of PURE crap (first posts, beowulf clusters, goatse.cx etc. From that point of view, it would be better to get the good posts that have a rating of 1 to get a rating of 2 (or more) so that one could set the filter to 2 and get an even better signal ratio.
But either way, spending points moderating serious posts "off topic" just because they were slightly off topic seems like an awful waste to me. Same goes for many "redundant" moderations. So what if there's a little redundancy? It's much worse to have a lot of pure crap in there than to have some ok post that is redundant. That's what I think anyway.
Dude, moderator points are mostly wasted on things like "oh, oh! i don't think that was QUITE on topic! i'll moderate it down for being 'off topic'" or "oh!!! i think i saw another post touching that a few screens up, i'll moderate this one down for 'redundant'". Instead, moderators should spend their points moderating GOOD POSTS UP! It's sad, because many good posts never get moderated up - probably because all moderator points are wasted on crap.
And.. a little rant.. ANYTHING even SLIGHTLY off topic that mentions something even slightly positive about Microsoft will always be moderated down. Anything, no matter how off topic, that says something negative about Microsoft will either be moderated up or left untouched. It doesn't matter if the story is about the Muppet Show or Mars landers..
I myself hate modal dialog boxes.
War is necrophilia.
Hardware support for /dev/fb is minimal, and there's no 3D.
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Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.
I've found the development time and cost associated with "low-level" languages like VB are too great for kernel development. I'd much wrather bring the PowerBuilder and ColdFusion approach to kernel design. Also, I don't understand all of this confusion around I/O. Why not use a language like Javascript, that doesn't even need any I/O.
Someone you trust is one of us.
I never said moving to the current Linux framebuffer, I asked why the framebuffer can't be expanded into a proper driver model/API that we can use. I only use the name Framebuffer to distingish it from X, but it's a misleading name as it would no longer be a framebuffer.
You don't loose your hardware exceleration, you've got it in the new drivers. You don't have to loose 3D, as OpenGL can sit on top (Or even parts of it in) the device drivers.
You don't even need to loose your toolkit libraries or even, dare I say it, XLib. The toolkits are fully portable, no problem there, and if you put your mind to it, you could layer an XLib implentation over the lower level Framebuffer. Another option would be to allow the user to switch off the Framebuffer and just run the old X.
For home users, they can still run GTK+, Qt, and the Gnome or KDE desktop(s) without even noticing anything other than the fact that Linux is easier to use. The Old Guard, and people who need X for whatever reason, can still run X.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
firstoff: bollocks! I can understand your concern, but things you mention are not of concern in this case. You see, THE thing about this meeting is that people who are there, are (not all, but most) _organizers_. Linus himself is not as much a kernel programmer than he is kernel developement organizer. These people are those who listen to "bigger forces", and maybe push kernel development into that direction. The question is NOT about linux kernel getting "core" development team (altough there's one already, though in fluctuating state as it is..). Here's question about "bigger picture". Of course I'm very sorry about people who've committed to kernel but still not getting to the meeting, but well, that's how life goes, now it's time for them to get their thoughts heard thru code. Linux (kernel) makes it fully possible. Remember that Linus (T) is not some bs-man sitting somewhere, but he's a real haccker with great attitude to great "hacks". If you'r code is good, it'll always gets through, if not immediately (ReiserFS).. there's time for everything under the sun..
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
edwarddes:
:) Many of the things I want for a smooth desktop experience I have been poking around to find out about, and I find that many of them are either part of 2.4 (even if not yet totally polished), or really application issues rather than kernel issues (And so developments on 2.5 don't have that much to do with them ...) Support for USB devices like my external SmartMedia reader and HP 8200 CD-RW drive is in there, and support for a lot of USB scanners and other devices. More USB stuff will arrive* but the kernel infrastructure doesn't really seem like the problem.
:)
What kernel changes do you hope to see in future versions?
Not a facietious question!
Likewise, the "easy desktop" stuff seems more in the hands of the various window manager and desktop environment projects than in the kernel -- and they're doing a good job!
So I'm curious what kernel things you're thinking about. I certainly am more interested in Linux as a personal operating system than in servers, but it seems like a lot of the thresholds have moved up. The kernel can *already* handle most (currently) reasonable demands for personal computing, while the mondo systems of the world are now the ones that the kernel guys face as a challenge.
simon
*I'm not a USB fanatic, but I know this makes it sound that way;)
"Hey Carlito, r'membah me? Benny Blanco from the Bronx!"
Not every single release requires one to download the tarball and rebuild the kernel...but for every release there is someone out there who wants the new feature or needs the bug fix and sees the advantage to take the time to upgrade. If we were to move to quarterly point releases, you would make a number of people mad.
For example, on some of the systems around here I'm still running 2.0.34, because those systems don't need the updates. The work gets done. Others are running 2.2.15 (soon to move to the latest 2.2 for security reasons). Not one of my servers is running a 2.4 -- yet -- because I don't think that the 2.4.x series has enough run time on it yet -- I tend to be conservative about upgrades. In other words, the 2.4.3 doesn't have something that I can't live without, so I let other early adopters (the people on the bleeding edge) scope out the system before I move to it on any of my boxes.
Does this sound to you like a variation on "If it ain't broke, don't fix it?" Good hearing...
It's a minor driver issue. You don't need to be a core hacker and OS architect to fix it.
There is an error in the article. X can automatically see new hardware plugged in. Thats what "/dev/input/mice" is for. It is a multiplexer for mice.
Use it!
-EvilMonkeyNinja
a.k.a. Joseph Nicholas Yarbrough
Security Grunt by Day
Programmer by Night
-EvilMonkeyNinja
Mild Mannered Host by Day
Wild Hammered Programmer by Night
Hai! Well, since my first post was considered troll, so will this one. I can think about these os' and it will take Linux quite a bit to catch up. First off, it needs to become compatable with most all hardware so these people at home can set it up easily. Number 2, lack of support (so far). I know it's gaining, I use linux too, but right now, Windows is in the lead. Linux has winme/98/98se whipped in terms of stability but I've used the WinXP beta, and I can tell you, it's stable, not as much as linux, but puts the 9x family to shame. The Fusion 2.5 (DLL and System File Protection) is great, almost making sure DLLHeLL will not occur. Both have equally sleek interfaces, and now WinXP has the theme manager, like Gnome and KDE. It's an opinion moderators, seriously. If something is not in check with your linux zealot powers, you mod it down. Get a life damnit.
You can't fight ideas with bullets - NSF Terrorist Leader, Level One of Deus Ex
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Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.
I know that I always look for kernel hackers to wear paper hats whenever I select an OS...
If people would only look to the paper hat, it would solve all the computer problems in the world...
Maybe that's Microsoft's problem... no paper hats. No hats at all actually. Maybe Gates should invest in some headgear... perhaps a fedora would be appropriate...
Dave
DOS is dead, and no one cares...
DOS is dead, and no one cares...
If there's a Bourne Shell, I'll see you there
That with all the kernel hackers gathered in the same place. Microsoft might make a deal (another?)with Satan for a terible disaster to strike that building and kill everyone? :(
Since a lot of unwanted doors (read security vulnerability) are created as a result of buffer overflows (blame it on who ever you want to: CPU manufacturers, compiler designers, language architects, etc) is it possible to create a kernel-level watchdog that keeps an eye on stack tampering?
Picture this...
The kernel hacker summit begins, with a beautiful starlit night (hackers would never be caught hacking in bright sunlight). Hackers are absorbing caffiene, discussing better ways to manage memory, more efficient uses for resources and so forth...
Fade to Redmond. [Wide shot of the Microsoft campus] Lightning bolts, thunder and rain abound. Bill Gates is on his throne, stroaking his Evil Goatee(tm). As he pets his cat, he mutters..."Yes, this is my chance..." With a quick decisive action, he calls up his satelite targeting system...aims it at the hacker conference...presses the button, and *BLAM* Blue Screen of Death. Just at that time, our heroes stumble into the room. Scoobie Doo rolls into Bill Gates, knocking him down, and he's pinned under Scooby. "Curses!!!", Bill cries. Fred and Daphne walk up to Bill, and pull off his mask. It's Old Mr. Withers, the curator at the local museum! "I had a good scam going, and I would have got away with it, if it wasn't for you meddling kids, and that mangy mutt!"
Check out my sysadmin blog!
How about getting ACPI working?
/dev/mixer causing it to get reloaded?).
How about improving "apm -s" so I don't need to manually unload my cs sound driver (and first kill xmms which constantly reopens
How about improving boot up time? Including the bootup logo patch?
How about getting DMA mode working on all the IDE controllers out there and having them intelligently configure themselves (I've lost more than one disk to hdparm tweaking).
How about making my mp3's not get choppy when my system starts swapping? (short of needing to apply rtlinux patches and nice --19'ing mpg123).
(DMA overruns too!)
How about including a kflushd that's smart about laptops?
How about cleaning up the documentation for proc.txt, with some examples of what humans could set things to.
How about splitting scsi, ham radio support, pcmcia, architectures, etc, etc into seperate tarballs so I don't need to download them all, or watch make depend go through them all?
I can't imagine that the same schedule() used to handle Apache and Oracle would do the same job as running GNOME..
Why not try ditching LILO for GRUB?
Please tell me that linux isn't going to adopt the idea of having a "core" team like the BSD's do ...
the only thing that will happen is that the kernel will be something that only the l33tist will be able to work on ...
This has been the case for quite some time. I remember reading complaints by many would be contributors that Linux kernel development may as well be closed since it has now become so complex only a few people are able to contribute anything meaningful to it. Also Linus is notorious for not accepting patches that people have worked hard on for a variety of reasons that sometimes smack of petulence.
Anyway, exactly how do you expect the future roadmap of for the Linux kernel to be handled if not by disussions by the people who are contributing about 90% of the code? Heck just a few years ago it was done by one person, Linus, despite the number of patches that were received by the "open Source" community. It's one thing for patches and bug fixes to be handled in a bazaar manner where discussion is done via a mailing list but on the other hand when dealing with the design of the system architecture or "vision for the future" this is best done by as few people as possible. Design by committee is always bad.
Heck even Perl which has probably as many contributors as Linux gone a similar route with a fewer number of developers directing the future of the project.
This alone made linux great because it was a community effort to get the kernel rolling into a quality piece of code
However this "meeting" makes your wonder if this is a community project anymore, there are hundreds of kernel hackers out there, who have in some way contributed code to the kernel
however only 65 get to attend this meeting ..
Please tell me that linux isn't going to adopt the idea of having a "core" team like the BSD's do ... ...
the only thing that will happen is that the kernel will be something that only the l33tist will be able to work on
additionally forking the kernel code just so that the community can work on the code as opposed to a "core" team is even more stupid ... there go whatever standards the linux kernel had ... get what I mean?
just my 2 cents ...
Sunny Dubey
Isn't detecting CPU and internal system temperature already done at the BIOS level? It shouldn't be hard to implement here; just test the temperature levels every time a disk operation fails. But maybe the rest of the room is on fire! But we'll save space in the bad block table once the system is restored.
If you read further down the article, you'll see that Stephen Tweedie, a well-established kernel hacker, read his laundry list of changes, many of which mirrored the Oracle suggestions. Oracle is just pointing out what limits the performance of their file-intensive applications, limitations that other kernel hackers who care about file performance also observed.