Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Linux Kernel 2.4.10

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the download-compile-reboot-repeat dept.

erinntriggs writes "Kernel 2.4.10 is out and available at the usual places." You know the drill people! Time to make bzImage and wreck those glorious uptimes.

1 of 403 comments (clear)

  1. Desktop users may like the pre-emption patch by marm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Those of you who use Linux as a desktop may be interested in the pre-emptible kernel patch for 2.4.10, available from here.

    This patch allows the rescheduling of in-flight kernel syscalls if a higher-priority process than the process calling the syscalls becomes eligible to run.

    What it means in practice for the typical desktop user is a major enhancement to interactive performance under Linux, especially when under heavy load. Your X pointer will never freeze with this patch. Using this patch, I have played skip-free mp3's whilst my system has had a loadavg of 20, and my KDE desktop was still usable. I could never hope to achieve this with ordinary Linux. It's a really impressive bit of work. Go try it out.

    Of course, people with the need for proper real-time response out of Linux (musicians, for example) will love it even more... maximum latencies for me with this patch are under 4ms - again, very impressive.

    It's slated for inclusion in the mainline kernel early in 2.5, but could do with lots of testing first... you know what to do.