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Kernel 2.4.17 Out
ThatComputerGuy writes "Linux kernel 2.4.17 is final, with a lot of fixes/updates. Check out the huge changelog. If you're on a desktop machine, you should try using RML's preempt patch, it definitely helps response times."
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Yet another Linux kernel. That's great. Am I being a troll by stating that I think Linux kernels are a little over-versioned ? I mean, from an uninterested person's perspective (aka FreeBSD guy), it seems like kernel 2.4.13.44 came out yesterday, and 2.4.13.45 came out today (someone patched NFS), and tomorrow when someone finds a bug in inetd it'll be 2.4.13.46. I'm seriously not trying to flame or troll, but it just seems that way. If FreeBSD changed a version number every time 10 patches went in I'd go insane.
you don't HAVE to upgrade your linux box, either. but at least you have the OPTION of upgrading for FREE, instead of paying year after year if you want to upgrade.
as you said, you are happy with win98, more power to you. but many people are not happy with windows and have to shell out big bucks every couple years to upgrade.
yeah, i know, the post was flamebait. but hey, i'm a sucker for anything this obvious.
-sam
burn the computers. go back to the abacus.
Looks like the new kernel maintainer is really working out. I enjoy seeing these kind of detailed changelogs, to determine whether there is anything critical enough to upgrade my system.
Seems like Alan and Linux lately haven't been all that hot about doing the drudge detail work. This arrangement seems to be the best solution for everyone.
SSE requires some extra effort on the OS on context-switch, since the SSE registeres are not normally saved/restored (they are only available on SSE-enabled CPUs). So SSE has been unusable on K7 up until now since you might have your programs screwed up by a context switch.
-._''_.-
Does it really make sense to mirror the signature? You'd have to be pretty dumb to download the sign from an untrusted source. That's what the sign is _for_.
Mirroring signature is useless. .sign.
Signature should be downloaded form kernel.org to check if patch mirrored by you has been altered.
If you mirror signature, you could have altered both patch and
:wq
You remember right. Lack of *any* documentation, more like it. Licensing I don't think is a problem, as everything is done blind. MS changes NTFS every time they put out a new OS though, so that kind of complicates things.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
In fact, *only* Linux users have to upgrade their kernel every so often.
Users of proprietary OSes don't have a chance to, and users of about
any other Free OS - well most other free OSes kernels just aren't
broken every second week.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
If so, he would have to possess the kernel.org secret keys. If he does, we have some really nasty security problems that we didn't know about :-/
This isn't just an md5sum, it's a gpg signature. You can verify it as long as you have the public key, which is widely available.
damn, man! Why is this rated 'funny' with _every_ kernel release? Or am I the only one noticing/nagging?
I'm sure I'm going to be showing my age when I say that I remember the Big Switch from .Z (Compress format) to .gz on most FTP sites. Is .bz2 really becoming that common? The only place I'm really exposed to it are the kernel sites, most other source code repositories are either just .gz or still have legacy .Z stuff lying around...
That's not *quite* right. Linux has been pre-emptive since the beginning, but in userspace, not kernelspace. IE, system calls, driver code, and other kernel stuff couldn't be preempted, but user code could.
Windows, on the other hand (9x, I don't know about NT) is fully cooperative, meaning that userland isn't preempted either. That, and poor memory protection, is why buggy windows programs can bring the system down, Whereas in linux, only kernel space stuff can lock up the system.
The preempt patch, then just makes the kernel preemptable, so that Linux is fully preemptive, instead of just in userland.
Fish
> After several of the last few kernels being released with major bugs, I thought the consensus on LKML was to use -rc versions for bugfixes, and then release a 'final' without making any changes in it. Yet, when I read this changelog, I see that changes were made in the final version.
You're correct that this is the general principle that will be used. BUT, Marcelo reserves the right to make judgements case-by-case, and in this case felt that the fixes were small enough to go in the final build.