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Interview With WOLK Creator Marc-Christian Peterse
Jeremy Andrews writes "KernelTrap has spoken with Marc-Christian Petersen, who originated the WOLK project in March of 2002. WOLK is the Working Overloaded Linux Kernel, a large set of nearly 450 useful patches applied against the current stable 2.4 Linux kernel tree. The project has recently expanded to offer a second 'secure' patchset, this one against the older stable 2.2 tree.
In this interview, Marc-Christian Petersen tells the history behind WOLK and discusses many of the patches included."
that's good, because we all hate those (Nazi-ish) elitist kernels.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I'm wondering though if anybody is, and if so what's the function? A lot of these patches have some very juicy features.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Who use redhat, maybe an RPM?
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
Totally different issues. I shall not even start.
It is nice to see a project like this. Hopefully it will let these patches get enough public testing to make it into a mainstream kernel.
One of the patches talkaout in the interview was supermount. Does anyone know why this is not in the main kernel. This is a must have feature for linux on the desktop. It has been included in distros like mandrake for a long time, so it should be pretty stable.
Actually, I disagree. I have found the WOLK kernels to contain a lot of the fixes and features we needed all in one convenient package. Of course, I stress tested the WOLK servers before putting them into the production server room. I would highly recommend anyone that is curious in the WOLK kernels to use them in a production environment.
cpeterso
It's a very quick way to test all the patches. Then only apply the ones with features you want to your production kernel.
Liberty.
Is this the first big "unofficial" fork of the Linux kernel? We've had different trees, but those have been maintained by people who are very close to kernel-development (I only know of AC, but I belive there are more), but this tree seems to have come out of nowhere? I hope this isn't the event that marks the beginning of Linux following of the old Unix history.
I guess that's the idea of a modular and open-source kernel, you can add things you want, remove things you don't want, but somehow adding patches from "outsiders" make me feel I'm not running a *real* Linux system - The way Linus Intended(TM).
OTOH, My LFS system is unique, with changes that make it different to standard Linux systems - including patches in the kernel - and I love the thing, so I guess there's no need to feel "guilt" over it.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
..had this many features!
It's an orgy of features!
if anyone said that about windows, there would be rioting.
hypocrites.
This is just my personal wishlist:
1) A standard hardware acceleration layer for 2D and 3D cards, something we can ask the NVidia people to add to their drivers and code equivalents for other cards.
2) Wine intergration. Routing Win32 messages through the kernel would be kinda nice.
3) Java acceleration. Hooks for some standard Java functions: this would help a lot in some specific embedded situations.
4) ACL support for ports and stuff (like the security patches).
5) A standard "driver package" format containing the kernel module, user-mode tools and installation instructions for binary only (yecc) drivers. (One driver fits all distros!)
I've been working with Linux-based systems since '97 and I have to say, it's just getting better and better. I'm sure a lot of the above is would actually not be good in most kernels, but since one of Linux's strong points is scalability, I'd really like to see Linux take on the desktop, handheld and server market!
Interesting... Since Linux was created since minix changes could *only* be distributed as patches (modified minix source code couldn't be redistributed).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I use wolk for Xfs + Alsa integration its realy nice that I dont have to recompile alsa when I recompile my kernel because its integrated into kernel! And nice xfs integration too. No need to mention nice debian boot logo ( although I use slackware :/ ).And much more! Anyway if you want to have a look @ it check www.sourforge.net/projects/wolk or http://wolk.sf.net
Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
He says "the O(1) scheduler really only helps if you have more than ~200 processes, below that, it slows everything down a lot" (or something similar).
That doesn't make sense. If the new scheduler is O(1), it should be faster in all cases, and under no circumstances slow things down.
--Joakim Ziegler
And it should not necessarily be faster in all cases. Is 1000000 less than 10n? For n greater than 100000 it is, but otherwise it's slower. The first is O(1), but the second is O(n). O(1) is often slower than polynomial algorithms.
A /. story that expands an acronym? Fetch me my canned food and bottled water....
IN TEH FUCHAR, LITERSY WLIL EB OPSHANAL!!!!!111
Seams like a great idea to me, but tbis isn't a new idea at least i don't think so, did yoy see the distibution kernels (esp. Mandrake) it's very patch happy (not thats a bad thing because ther are ton of fixes). I wonder if they skip with XFS, i wish XFS would be merged into the kernel because it's very stable (i run it on many systems) unlike raiser (which btw is in the offical tree) it's fast, and why now :) But as far as i know it's not even in the 2.5.x tree (correct me if i'm wrong), and those guys are probly having a hard time makeing patches both agains 2.5.x and 2.4.x when new versions come out.
You like Windows. I hope you're at least a shareholder. Because if you're defending such a monopolizing empire without even the excuse of being materialist, well, sincerely, I pity you even more, if that's possible at all.
When a patch is not a patch, batmoron?
The above poster probably meant for n less than 10 in the last phrase.
The "less than" symbol gets confused with HTML tags and is often left out.
Read/Write NTFS.
I would _use_ that. Currently to transfer things from
one OS to the other on a WinXP/Linux dual-boot system
is a pain (I'm using an smb share on a different PC on
the network...)
Yeah, I know WinXP can theoretically use FAT, but I
don't (call me crazy) particularly want to have to
reinstall it, and it came preinstalled on NTFS.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
You're reading, too! And look: this doesn't mean anything, 'cause you're waaaaaaay lame, dude!
Linux was created since minix changes could *only* be distributed as patches (modified minix source code couldn't be redistributed).
It's the same deal with QPL software such as much of PHP 4.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Compressed caching is the introduction of a new level into the virtual memory hierarchy. Specifically, RAM is used to store both an uncompressed cache of pages in their 'natural' encoding, and a compressed cache of pages in some compressed format. By using RAM to store some number of compressed pages, the effective size of RAM is increased, and this way the number of page faults that must be serviced by very slow hard disks is decreased.
This is exactly the technique that Connectix's "RAM Doubler", a replacement for the Macintosh System 7 virtual memory manager, used way back in 1996. I wonder if Connectix has a patent on it.
SuperMount has the ability to access your cd's/floppies on the fly without need to mount / umount them every time.
Mac OS has automounted removable media since 1984.
It's good to see that Linux is progressing as a kernel for a workstation OS. But even its major proponents admit that it has some catching up to do. WOLK is a step in the right direction.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I seem to recall seeing freshmeat posts about the FOLK kernel with similar aims (ie linux+every possible patch, look n' see what breaks). Anybody know if this is the same project?
:-)
Either way, it seems a good idea so He-Who-Doesn't-Scale has a good idea of which bleeding edge patches sorta work, which ones work great but are too specialised, and which ones barf & die spectacularly
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