Linux Beta Kernel 2.5.16 Out

dipfan writes "The latest beta version of the Linux kernel 2.5.16 is out, with some comments by Linus here, who was kept 'personally somewhat busy' by 'the interesting Intel SMP-P4 TLB corruption bug, which ends up being due to some very funky asynchronous speculative TLB fill logic'. Woo hoo. Mirrors, etc." We haven't been keeping up with the 2.5.x series, but a slow Sunday is a good excuse to catch up.

Comments

"Beta" kernel?

[Platinum Dragon]

At best, I would call the development series "alpha". Beta implies that the kernel is ready for general testing prior to release, and there are few known showstopper bugs.

When 2.5 goes -rc, or Linus starts making prereleaserr noises, then go ahead and call it "beta". Until then, it's the type of thing you inflict on a computer you don't mind messing around with.

Kernel 2.6

[i_am_nitrogen]

Actually, some people believe that the 2.0 series is the most recent quality Linux kernel.. While obviously that's open for debate, there are people hard at work backporting 2.2.x and even 2.4.x subsystems to make kernel 2.0.40. which I imagine will be released some time this year.

Personally though, I can't wait until 2.6... I know someone who's working on some of the new graphics stuff in his spare time (the new graphics layer is code named "Ruby"), and there will be some sweet stuff. The DRI, framebuffer, Video4Linux, etc. systems will all be made into one unified kernel interface, which will be user friendly and capable enough to (almost) program graphics applications in bash! Imagine (device names are changed to protect the innocent ;p):

# set video format
echo "640x480x24" > /dev/gfx/camera/cam0.mode
echo "640x480x24" > /dev/gfx/video/vid0.mode

# display snapshot
cat /dev/gfx/camera/cam0.gfx > /dev/gfx/video/vid0.gfx

I mean, that's just too cool for words.

Not to mention we'll finally be able to ditch X on the desktop for the framebuffer without losing OpenGL support, and let X do what it was meant to do: thin clients and network terminals.

Kernel Testing Tips

[goingware]

If you are new to compiling your own kernel, or you would like information on how to more effectively test development kernels (or stable kernels, before putting them into production), these two articles may be helpful to you:

• Why We Should All Test the New Linux Kernel
• Using Test Suites to Validate the Linux Kernel

Also check out the Open Source Development Lab's Scalable Test Platform. You can use STP to run your kernel patches and test code that you upload to OSDL's big iron hardware, or you can download the STP source code so you can use it as a test harness on your own machine.

(I should add the STP to my article but haven't gotten around to doing so yet).