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Linus And Alan Settle On A New VM System
stylewagon writes: "ZDNet are reporting that Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox have finally agreed on which Virtual Memory manager to include in future kernel releases. Both have agreed to use the newer VM, written by Andrea Arcangeli, from kernel version 2.4.10 onwards. Read more in the article."
I cite November 2nd: The great VM dispute really isn't. It went something along the lines of "Putting a new vm in 2.4.10 is crzy", "Probably it was but its done so lets make it work" and at 2.4.14pre8 "See it works" "Yep".
Though I do not think that Linux would have been doomed just because there were two different versions of the kernel out there it would have been probably more difficult for Linux.
So that's good news. J.
It's previously been argued that Andrea's VM doesn't work with NUMA architectures, hence work should continue on Rik's 2.4.x design
Not a problem now, but it's one of the major aims of 2.5, according to Linus. Anyone know how they are going to square this circle?
"Mary had a crypto key, she kept it in escrow, and everything that Mary said, the Feds were sure to know."
At eWeek.
"Mary had a crypto key, she kept it in escrow, and everything that Mary said, the Feds were sure to know."
It claims that SuSE is a US company (funny how I could have sworn it was German ;o)
It also says that Alan Cox will take over 2.4 once 2. 5 is opened which is wrong...
The whole war story is totally ridiculous. There has never been a talk about a fork. All there was were discussions of whether a new VM should be brought in 2.4 instead of 2.5, and some talk about the validity of benchmarks showing the improvements with the new VM.
I guess there is not much going on in the news for them to feel like writing about this...
Besides, this is nothing new since Alan Cox sayed that his last ac patch would probably be the last one with the old VM.
Black holes occur when God divides by zero.
Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox have finally agreed...
In related news, pigs are now flying all over town, and hell just froze over.
</sarcasm>
from the article- The accord also ends speculation that a fragmented Linux community would be doomed in the face of Windows.
where does this ludicrious speculation come from? this sort of reporting of unsubstanciated claims is quite funny on the surface. but the more general audience reading this article will think MUCH less of the stability of the linux kernel reading crap like this. sure there is/were two different VM systems that has caused lots of posting here on ./ and probably much discussion on the kernel mailing list. how in the hell does that indicate that the linux community will be doomed in the face of windows? ARRRGGGGG!
Was there really any dispute between ac and Linus, or was it just a technical competition to see which system could be pushed the farthest?
I thought the eWeek article took an unnecessarily confrontational tone.
sPh
I was talking to a friend yesterday about this very issue. I'm glad to see it resolved. To the outside world, Linux already looks fragmented compared to windows (many different distributions of linux compared to one Microsoft). This may not be a correct assumption, but having two different kernels did not help the situation at all.
Now, finally, we can say again : "There is one linux kernel, there are many different distributions. The kernel is the same and the different distributions differ only in programs and scripts".
Linux isn't ready for the desktop? Ohhhh crap....do I have to erase it then?
From the article: Torvalds is close to handing over the stable 2.4 kernel to Cox.
...and I thought that Marcelo Tosatti was going to maintain 2.4.
Does this really matter to the average Linux user in daily life? I've been using Linux for several years now and never stumbled upon some obscure VM (besides Java VMs, but that's another story). It just used to work, and it worked good.
So what's this all about? How does the average user profit from this change? Maybe Linus was right when he stated that the really important/interesting work is now done on the desktop frontier and no longer under the kernel's hood.
Any suggestions?
It seems these folks decided that using the whois database for the companies location was a good idea.
It turns out that the registration for suse.com does point to an office in CA. But if this moron would do some real research, he'd find out that they are infact in Germany. Of course all of us knew this.
Then again most reporters are morons..
Linus and Alan had their wrists taped together and sort of danced/knife fought while eddy van halen played guitar in the background...
oh wait that was a michael jackson video... sorry... though still this might be as accurate as anything else...
Regardless of what the article almost implied (that Cox and Linus were at dispute), this is good news for the kernel. From the sounds of it this new VM will make quite a difference from a performance aspect. I could almost care what people are fighting about. As long as new features get implimented, or the system is revamped to improve performance/stability, I'll be happy. And thats what the point is here... A new VM is going to be implimented, and its supposed to kick butt. So enjoy it and quit squabling about weather or not Cox and Linus are fighting!
Can all fish swim?
1. Everyone knew the Rik VM was poor
2. Linus was stressed about it and took a brave decision to go with Andrea's VM
3. It was VERY late to be doing this, but necessary.
4. Linus' decision was correct as it turns out.
5. Alan's decision was also correct in that you shouldn't be doing this kind of dramatic about-face in a 'stable' kernel.
6. Alan's going with Andrea was also correct.
7. I've been waiting, along with many others, for this whole mess to be sorted before 2.5 was started and I upgraded kernels.
8. Passing 2.4 over to Alan means we can upgrade in confidence. This should be the test of stability for 2.6: upgrade when Linus passes it on to Alan.
What better way to insure the longevity of Linux than to recruit new Kernel Hackers with tales of heated debate and intrigue (I've noticed two in the last week).
What's next, the KernelCam? Tune in to watch Linux, Alan, and the rest hacking away. View live feed of USENET postings! Only $3.99 per minute.
Amazing magic tricks
I like to think of Linux development as sort of a modified IETF style: rough consensus and running code, with a sprinkle of holy penguin pee when Linus thinks it's ready to ship. Linus saw a problem, had a solution presented to him, and just went for it. Alan thought it was a bit insane to switch horses in midstream. I would normally agree with Alan; better to try to get the horse you're on to do the job than try to jump to another one. Worry about getting a newer, better horse once you're safely on the other bank.
Given the time frame for 2.5/2.6, though, and given the seriousness of the VM issues, I can see why Linus decided to take the risk. Apparently so does Alan. I'm kindof anal about release numbers, so I'd probably have started a 2.5 branch to test the new VM in, and refused any other changes, then released 2.6 with the new VM. That fundamental a change should probably get a point increase in version number.
Regardless, the short version is that this is much to do about nothing. The rest of the industry just isn't used to seeing this sort of thing happen in plain view. It normally happens behind the scenes, with a carefully scripted spin put on it by marketing. Maybe if they see the process work enough times people will become comfortable with it. I doubt it.
how does this new VM manager compare to the old one? I assume it's better, but exactly how does it improve over the old one.
And how does it compare to VM manager in other 'nixs out there, especially FreeBSD.
We seem to take things too personally here. Alan and Linus had a disagreement about when and why. Much like people I work with on a daily basis have differences of opinion on approach. In the end we do not start working for other companies, we reach an agreement.
ZDnet is not the ACM; they are trying to sell magazines (or at least sponsors). A little conflict spices up the story. Should they put a more reasonable context around these things? Sure. However, if they did : "Linus and Alan agree on future" is hardly news worthy.
The more people hear about LINUX the better. (positive spin coming...)
In this context people can believe we know how to operate as open source and an effective business model. The need to evaluate, compare and when necessary compromise can be accomplished in this model for the benefit of everyone. People who appreciate that the people we want to be making business decisions for Linux.
I think it's unfair to characterise robust debate as fracturing or a lack of unity in the Linux comunity. Isn't it normal for people to disagree on things? It may look like disunity to your average joe, but the fact is that corporations very carefully control what the media knows and what discussions go on behind closed doors. I'm sure everyday people in companies all over the world not only argue till they are blue in the face, but also undermine each other's authority, turn coworkers against their opponent and other nasty political bullshit.
Open software has an open process. That is a strength. Suggesting that just because there is disagreement in the Linux community means that it is less co-operative or cohesive than Microsoft or anyone else is utter crap. Open debate and having your own opinions are healthy signs, much better than some coerced worker toeing the company line, idependent of what is technically best.
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
The new VM has been embraced, is it now time for the extending-part?
Its so funny how everything that goes on in the Linux community that is reported on, even by "tech-sauvy" news orginizations, has to do with the doom and gloom of Linux. It seems that almost weekly Linux is narrowly "saved" from total destruction. I think the media wants people to believe that Linux is so unstable and that the smallest dissagreement will seperate the whole community and send it into complete chaos.
... I would just like to see a news article that didn't mention the "unknown future" of Linux
..."The accord also ends speculation that a fragmented Linux community would be doomed in the face of Windows."...
It seems that news about Linux is not intresting enough unless it is a struggle against Microsoft or has some doomesday issue that could cause it to "fall".
just an observation
"Cox, who also works for Red Hat, in Durham, N.C., and lives in Swansea, Wales."
I just want to have the most stable && reliable VM design. I couldnt believe when I switched to 2.4.1 and had so many problems with the VM. Also I remember strange comments from Linus saying that you had to have twice the swap space of RAM, which is incorrect, as the VM is supposed to start been used when you havent enough RAM (am i wrong ?).
I think they made a mistake releasing a buggy VM design in a stable kernel serie (2.4), which was solved just with the beginning of 2.4.10 series.
Hope to not suffer never again this behavior. I dont care if is they choose Andrea Arcangelis or Riks VM design but please keep working on it, its a major concern for an OS that claims to be stable & reliable (I dont want to switch to *BSD).
Kind Regards.
jc.
Wow, I wanna get some of that time machine action!
Anyone care to give a short explanation on what this system is?
:)
I've always been interesting in kernel coding, but some of the concepts sound pretty black-magic for me
...and not before time. Perhaps Linus can make a firm decision by, say, 2.5.10 on what goes into 2.6 and what gets kept aside for 2.7? That way we might see 2.6 before the end of 2002. We can always hope.
It's important for a lot of this new stuff to get thoroughly used so that alternatives, replacements, options and enhancements can be devised at warp speed. It's also important to have an odd kernel series active so that imaginitive new stuff has a home and doesn't stagnate.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
But, is this really soemthign that cna be defined as "settling." As I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong) Linus put the new VM into his kernel. Its been there ever since. And its not going away. Rather Cox is giving in the Linux, as he should, since Linus is in charge. This isnt settlement, its the natural course of development. A change is proposed, Linus oks it and impelments it. Everyone else follows suit sooner or later.
I understnad the potential horror of a kernel split, but does anyoner eally ebelieve that was going to happen? Im betting Cox would rather use a far inferior VM than allow a total split, simply because of the magnitude of suhc an action.
In Soviet Russia you dant have to put up with these crappy jokes
Thas is good news. If there's one thing that I don't need it is the choice of two trees.
:-)
Now if only I could get Mandrake to work on my i2o contoller, only RedHat72 seems to work for me but it is having problems booting on the 300gb raid after install. fscking disk geometry, it always gives me problems.
What does Voice Mail have to do with Linux??!!
while i don't pretend to know a lot about how to code kernels or vm's, if the new vm is better and faster than the old, i say kudos to linus and alan. this will bring linux one step closer to being ready for primetime on the desktop. little improvements such as this (although some may not see it as being as little as others) will further solidify the linux reputation as a fast, stable platform for desktop computing.
"I just want to thank my coach Eric a.k.a. Disco for shattering my reality..."
... honestly not meant to be a troll, but does anyone else find it strange that slashdot is reporting a ZDnet story about news re:the Linux kernel development ??
Have I missed something here ? I used to work in fraud investigation and there we have a dual scale of trusting information
- how trustworthy is this source ?
- how trustworthy is this source with regards to this type of information ?
(e.g. The Queen as a news source is considered trustworthy, but if The Queen told me the local 7-11 was going to be robbed at 11:30 tonight then I'd doubt the information).
Maybe that Jesse bloke really does know what he's talking about...
T
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
Shock as Alan Cox installs [new double glassed] Windows.
Phew that was close. NOT!!!
I haven't been following this thing closely but my impression from this forum was it went something like this:
Alan: You're an idiot!
Linus: You're an idiot!
Alan: Fine! I'll take my kernel and go home!
Linus: Fine! I'll get someone else to do the kernel!
Later...
Alan: Linus, you bitch! Have you been seeing another kernel developer on the side?
Linus: Yes, but I was a fool! I love you! I've always loved you!
Alan: And I love you!
Linus: You're not an idiot!
Alan: Oh, Linus! (Kiss kiss kiss)
Linus: Oh Alan! (Kiss kiss kiss)
Linus: Oh! Alan!
Hmm. Maybe I've been reading too many romance novels lately...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I think it's funny that so much attention is paid to your origin (i.e. location and language) in advertising engines, and the fact that it's an article about Linux is ignored. I got a random Windows advert here. Check it out.
This article is from yesterday. Today they are reporting that Cox Won't Be Maintainer of 2.4 Linux Kernel
Best Slashdot Co
i had been using 2.4.[789] for the past month or two on my stinkpad, and noticed some horrible swappage, especially after the system had been up for several days, with terrible interactive performance. After upgrading to 2.4.13, the problems all seem to have mysteriously vanished -- so I'm glad Linus decided to take the risk with the new VM. Hopefully we can approach something like a stable kernel. sheesh.
Can somebody explain the differences between the Andrea Arcangelis and FreeBSD VM desing ?.
I heard a lot of times that the *BSD desing is a lot better than the Linux, is this true ?.
Thanks for comments.
Actually, Isreal doesn't exist. Israel does, however, and is indeed part of the middle east.
I didn't see the lowercase w. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft's marketing picked up on this and used it. :D
Seriously though. This 'news item' is roughly akin to "Final Nissan VP agrees to stop calling it 'Datsun'".
m00.
I ran across an archive at OSDN.com that had a video from the 2.5 Kernel Summit (March 30th and 31st 2001). On the list of videos is 'Future VM Work presented by Rik Van Riel. Its a 1 Hour 4 Minute Video clip, but after listening to it for 5 minutes I knew it was WAY too technical for me. =P Anyways, if you want to see what he said about improving VM, head over to:
http://www.osdn.com/conferences/kernel
They have Real format in both 56K and 128K streams, Mpeg, and Mp3 of his speach. Looks interesting if you've got the bandwidth and the time.
Can all fish swim?
In brief and ONLY the basics... Modern operating systems today handle memory addressing in a virtual sense so that "fences" can be placed around memory owned by the OS and different applications. These fences serve to protect memory from being overwritten by other rouge programs. This works by making each program think that it's start of memory IS the actual start of physical memory. For example. Program "foobar" may be located at memory address 0xFF44 bytes, and have 0xFF bytes allocated to it. Instead of addressing its memory in the base:offset format as 0xFF44:0xFF, it thinks that 0xFF44 is actually address 0x00 and the top of memory is 0xFF. That way, it can't write to physical addresses at 0xFF43 or anything else lower. This range of memory can be broken into fragments and scattered through memory so that if other programs have been allocated since foobar started, it's not trapped.
Bear in mind, this is only the basic gist of what virtual memory is all about. This particlar subsystem will also handle memory paging (which is part of swapping out to disk), amongst other tasks.
Before you really get determined to start hacking the kernel tomorrow, I suggest you start with something a little more meager. You need to get some experience in computer arcitecture fundamentals, then really basic OS design. Read a few books. Learn Motorola or IA32 Assembly language. Learn to write some old DOS programs (a number of DOS emulators with free, open source DOS distros are available, so some searching) where you have to allocate every byte and word by hand, and not just say "Foo *f; f=new Foo();". Next, start to learn C and figure out what malloc() is all about. Then try coding a kernel module. This is obviously not an extensive road map, but computers and their operating systems are sophisticated. You can't really (unless you're someone like Cox or Torvalds) just dive right into systems programming and know what you're doing. It may take years of experience before you start to tinker with code in the kernel and actually write something that works.
Why bother.
This would be interesting for a high level discussion. One of the reasons I switched from Linux to BSD for servers in the mid 90's was because BSD's VM system was miles ahead of Linux. I know both systems have changed a lot since then. I don't know if Linux has caught up and surpassed FreeBSD or if FreeBSD has maintained its lead.
We run on alot of small systems, we are talking 8-16 megs of ram here and pentium 75ish processors. We tried to use linux once, but when linux runs out of memory with the old VM, it sucked HARD. I mean, I had processes being swaped out of memory compleatly that were ACTIVE!
Why do we use such small systems? Because we want them to perform under extream load when placed on larger systems. Its smart really, its easy to benchmark a few functions on a pentium 75, than a 2 ghz pentium. If your application doesn't run peppy with one usuer on a pentirum 75, it sure as hell won't support 1000 users on 2 ghz pentium.
Thats why we have used FreeBSD for all this time, in FreeBSD the VM manager is perfect, and isnt' even slated for upgrade in the near future due to the fact it works like it should. If you are using telnet on a FreeBSD machine, and _one_ applications uses a ton of resources, that one application will run slow. But your telnet will continue on fine. Try putting 12 megs of RAM in your machine, than compiling PostgreSQL while using a telnet session. You won't even notice the compile on FreeBSD, but you will with Linux.
Funny enough, this also ties into the article earlier regarding why Linux isn't used for alot of large scale databases. Databases consume HUGE amounts of RAM and the OS under it has to be peppy about it. Linux in the past has been tuned for desktop/single user performance and not what those databases need. They need TONS of resources, and quick _CONSISTANT_ access to it.
That said, I am very happy to see them getting a better VM. Because my biggest problem with FreeBSD is its crappy java support, the most recent stable JDK it supports is 1.2.2. And thats in Linux emulation mode!
So if things work out, and Linux supports java well, and doesn' crap out when it runs out of resources. We will defiently switch to Linux, and life will be good!
How in the world did my original post constitute as flamebait??
That's just too weird..had to say something
I like to think of Linux development as sort of a modified IETF style: rough consensus and running code, with a sprinkle of holy penguin pee when Linus thinks it's ready to ship.
This is perhaps the most beautiful description of the process I have ever heard.
I agree with you. People are used to dealing with a companies like MS, Apple, and Oracle, who are built from the ground up to never admit deficiency or the need for change even though that is a crucial aspect of any kind of upgrade cycle.
When a group of firebrands come around that can freely admit deficiency, it does cause some waves.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Has anybody else noticed that, since 2.4.10, the reported memory usage appears to be wrong? I noticed in the change logs that this was supposedly fixed in 2.4.13-pre1, but I still see the problem. Running "free" shows that I'm using up 245MB of RAM on the "-/+ buffers/cache" line (I'd paste it here, except Slashdot is rejecting the post due to "lameness filter encountered. *sigh*). Now I know I'm not using 245 MB of RAM (after subtracting out the buffers and cache), and I can prove it by running a program which allocates about 350MB of ram then frees it. When I do that, my memory usage, including swap, drops to about 70-80 MB. Is anybody else seeing this?
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
Of course, this might not fix the problem: either the patch doesn't fix enough, or the design is flawed to start with (I have not delved into either Linux VM to competently present an opinion here, just speculation on what might be wrong). But there is something to be said for "the devil you know". At least the problems with the old VM were fairly well known. Moving to a new VM could potentially introduce new ones. Not something you want to do close to release.
Now, those plagued by problems with the older VM might, in exasperation, think anything would be better. Enter Linus with Andrea's alternative: "looks good, ship it!" [my paraphrasing]. Those of us who'd tremble at the thought of new, untested code, could, well, stick to an older kernel, even if it meant giving up some new features.
But wait! It's Alan to the rescue!! Picking up all the relatively easy fixes and enhancements, and giving me a choice. Leave the contentious parts till later..
It strikes me that the minor, temporary -ac fork served both camps of users until the issues were resolved.
Some might argue for a more disciplined approach, and not make major changes so close to release. (But, if it isn't "ready", why not just postpone release? Is Linus feeling pressure to release prematurely? Or just trying to release "often enough".) But that stands in the way of progress -- I've seen managers crippled by fear of changing anything. Sometimes you gotta take a chance, even if some things break while (many) others get fixed.
While smaller, digestable kernel changes might be more palatable, they're already available in interim development releases. Sometimes a change is sufficiently profound that it touches everything (yes, that's an argument to refactor, but hindsight is 20/20, so I won't argue that point too much) and takes a while.
I am not one to say which approach is globally better -- I can only comment on what works better for me. I can say, though, that when a community is really split over a course of action, and any single choice will not satisfy a large number of people, a fork, even if temporary, is probably the least painful route in the short term, even as the long term consequences are undesirable if it goes on too long.
After all, all progress is a mini-fork from "stable" to "untested".
You could've hired me.
Hey, I thought slashdot cited a comparison of the (fixed) Rik VM and the AA VM, and came to the conclusion that they performed about the same! They were both MUCH better than the 2.2 (old Rik) VM. What's Alan's evidence that the AA VM is "beating the pants off Rik'v VM?" If they really do perform about the same, I would have to side with Alan's original decision to just patch the old VM.
A few days ago I thought there was an article about Alan NOT being the maintainer anymore to focus more on "red hat customer issues" and other things?
Has this changed?
$ uname -a
/usr/local/jdk1.3.1/bin/java -version
FreeBSD ***.***.*** 4.3-RELEASE FreeBSD 4.3-RELEASE #6
$
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.3.1-internal-****
Classic VM (build 1.3.1-internal-****, green threads, nojit)
All I had to do was to download the tarball from sun into the ports directory and do your standard make, make install (you have to specifically download the file due to sun's fubared licensing). This took all of 15min to do and works great (just finished a CS project using it, javac, JavaCUP, and JLex).
The ports directory is your friend.
--InfinityEdge
The comment you replied to has a lowercase w. Alan's diary has an uppercase w. And that's correct. Indeed, English spelling rules dictate that the first word of a sentence should be capitalized...
As of just a few months ago, we had to download the sdk from sun. Than apply a series of patches, than do a hopeless compile that never worked due to some reason or another. It usually failed due to some X library or another, which sucked because all we wanted to run was Orion.
The ports entry for it is rather recent, and I am happy that you pointed it out to me. Just goes to prove how FreeBSD is always improving and evolving over a matter of months instead of years.
Another question is this, why is sun such a nazi about its jdk? It would be incredibly nice to be able to "fetch" the jdk instead of creating an account on sun just to download it.
Why, oh why did I have moderator points *last* week?!? Look at me, I just spilled orange juice over my keyboard. I guess there is no such thing as a free laugh.
reported this yesterday. Where have you guys been?
Damnit, Jim, I'm an anarchist, not a F@#$!^& doctor!
Really.. why is everybody getting their panties all in a bunch here? Two kernels? My big toe! Making Linux look fragmented?! WHAT?!
;) and a couple of different development kernels that most 'normal users' (ie not kernel hackers) will never touch. I think we can agree that those adventurous users who dwelve into pre and ac patches at least know enough to know they are called pre/ac for a reason. And yes.. I know there were 2 kinds of kernels.. at a sort of esoteric level but when we say 'the Linux Kernel' in the context of a normal running system doesn't that rather imply the stable branch of it? How many distros ship with ac? In the default... not in 'super expert mode'? Too many distros to say none.. but I've never seen one..
No I'm not a moron.. heh.. well maybe.. but I have two points..
1- There are not '2 kernels'.. this is crap.. there is ONE linux kernel (currently at 2.4.14.. which is development anyway.. but thats for another post
2- How is this going to ever possibly give the impression that linux is too fragmented compared to anything?! I figure (and I know this is a grevious over simplification) that there are basically two kinds of users.. those who know and those who don't. Those who know (IBM, Compaq.. those companies we want so bad) will know enough about the story to realize this is a disagreement in timing if anything and no big deal... Those who don't haven't heard about this anyway.
So other than the kernel developers needing to run both.. what's the problem?
'..that kernel panicked like a nun in a crack house!'
Normal users touch tens of different kernels. Normal users use distributions, which are usually forks of their own; like the RedHat kernel, which has much of the -ac thing. It's very rare for a distribution to use a pristine, Linus release kernel.
And it's a darn good one.
The best example of that this DOES happen all the
time in closed source companies is Microsoft.
Gates is famous for developing a climate where
rival teams are pitted against each other.
Viciousnes is not only tolerated but encouraged.
Linux mailing lists are peacefest in comparisom.
Like the Universe the kernel development is unfolding as it should.
To all those complaining about instability you aren't supposed to run the latest kernel
unless you want ( in any capacity ) to help
with it's testing and development.
-
Hey, its great kernel 2.5 is imminent.
did anyone else say something ?
Many people have pointed out that the article is wrong about passing on the 2.4 tree to Cox, so where does that Linus quote come from? "Alan will clearly be the maintainer of it. I just want to turn over 2.4.x to Alan in a shape where I'm personally happy with it-and I was not happy with the VM before." Did Linus really say that? I find it hard to believe he did. Is ZD just making up quotes now, or what is going on?
No way, the Microsoft VM is far better - and Bill Gates is a Real American (tm), not like this Torvalds/Cox comedy duo ;-)
Big DEAL!
WHO CARES?
Does the new VM mean that StarOffice loads any quicker? It thrashes for about 10 seconds under MS Windoze before being ready, 12 under Solaris_x86, and 30 under Linux 2.2.18 or 2.4.7
Yeah, there are some high-falutin' OS concepts flying around here, but what really matters to me is, does it actually affect what I'm doing? Not a huge database, but if it can stop StarOffice thrashing so much (and it must be Linux doing it, since Solaris_x86 is so much quicker), then maybe I'll upgrade my kernel.
(All timings taken on identical 433MHz Celerons, 128MB, single 6MB IDE disk)
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
very, very good idea. I have always been a fan of
slash-trolls, i even collect the witty and smart
ones.
you Sir will be receiving my submission soon.
Religion/Closed development: "You'll accept what we give you. We're always right."
Science/Open development: "It doesn't work? We were wrong. Now let's get it right."
cpeterso
Don't feed the trolls.
I'm not so sure. How well has this new VM been stress tested? Mozilla and Quake3 seem to kludge about just about the same. Will Rik be continuing his work? Seems like if his is more advanced and documented I would rather be running and working on that.
oh well, I guess I'll have to stay with 2.4.10 then....
Buy more RAM, fools.
just for the sake of correctness:
SuSE is a wholly owned subsidiary of SuSE AG, Germany. Although its US web site doesn't explicitly state that it may be deduced from
http://www.suse.com/us/company/legal/index.html
...