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Linus And Alan Settle On A New VM System

Posted by timothy on from the imagine-this-was-about-windows-developers dept.

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."

3 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. Details please by lythari · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  2. Re:Summary as I see it... by hey! · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1. Everyone knew the Rik VM was poor


    Even that may be a bit strong. I'd say more that it was late than poor. I'm running a recent ac kernel on one of my production servers (long story, but suffice to say that I needed a bunch of things and this turned out to be the simplest way). I was initially concerned about the Rik VM, but so far it has worked fine. Of course this is anecdotal, but I almost certainly would have had serious problems if I had installed one of the earlier 2.4 kernels, which shows progress.

    Rik is right that you make things right before you make them fast; on the other hand the VM really needs to be right AND fast to be truly ready for prime time (and early releases in the 2.4.x series weren't all that "right" to begin with). The Rik VM is supposedly more advanced and featureful, but it may have simply been a bridge too far, at least given the time and resources he had to prove his ideas.

    I feel sorry for Rik, but thems the breaks. He may have been right but you don't get forever to prove your ideas. At some point the clock runs out on you, even if you are really close to pulling it off.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  3. The AA VM "beats the pants off" Rik's VM??? by TopherC · · Score: 3, Interesting
    "I took the older VM plus fixes Rik felt would solve all the problems. Linus took Andrea's work. Right now, as of 2.4.14pre, Andrea's VM seems to be beating the pants off Rik's VM. All the current numbers suggest it's the better path."

    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.