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Linus says 2.6 kernel will be out by June 2003

Xpilot writes "C|Net reports that Linus Torvalds predicts 2.6 will be out by June next year during a talk on his Geek Cruise. Linus called the next release '2.6', but knowing him that may be just a working title;)" Update: 10/26 17:29 GMT by T : An anonymous reader adds "Rob Landley has published the latest list of features being considered for inclusion" in the new kernel; ... "the long and impressive list is available in more or less human readable form on Linux and Main."

14 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. I thought... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...that Linus was going to call it linux-3.0. Can somebody please stick with an official version number?

  2. Re:Transmeta by Aanallein · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Why the digs at Intel in an article about Linux?
    Probably because (the title notwithstanding) it wasn't an article about Linux, but one about a wide variety of (semi-)interesting things Linus said on that cruise. Linux of course is a very important part of that, but not the only thing Linus has an opinion on.
  3. Re:2.6?! by garcia · · Score: 4, Insightful

    this really isn't funny. It's an interesting point. Do most people really care that Linux is at version 2.6 or 3.0? No, not really.

    They want to push for 3.0 as a marketing tool, yet most companies that would even consider deploying Linux wouldn't be concerned w/the kernel version #'s. They are going to be concerned w/the distribution version #'s.

    After all, their support is probably going to come from the distribution manu, not IRC or a mailing list.

  4. Re:Transmeta by Brian+Stretch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because IA-64 requires a lot of work to support for mediocre results on an atrociously expensive platform that appears to be on a glide path to catastrophic failure. Those efforts could be more productively spent elsewhere.

    Meanwhile, x86-64 is much simpler to support, the platform will be cost competitive with current top-of-the-line x86 systems, and you don't have to recompile all your programs if you don't want to. 4-way and 8-way multiprocessor systems ought to be semi-affordable too. In short, it's a far better philosophical and practical fit.

  5. Re:When it's ready... by bogie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think he feels that way as well. Its just that he has learned that the corporate world likes release dates and the one he "gave" is in all likelyhood a resonable estimate. I see nothing in the GNU/Linux philosophy that states that you can't try to set a schedule and stick to it. Just because Redhat says "when its done" doesn't mean there isn't a giant whiteboard at their headquarters saying a certain date is "D-day".

    Also this isn't some sort of sign of selling out, but I do think if anyone is to guesstimate when a release is likely, they talked to the right person. He is after all the final authority when it comes to releasing kernels.

    --
    If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
  6. Inanium by Animats · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Because IA-64 requires a lot of work to support for mediocre results on an atrociously expensive platform that appears to be on a glide path to catastrophic failure. Those efforts could be more productively spent elsewhere.

    That's the best one-sentence indictment of the Inanium I've seen to date.

    Intel's plan was to come up with a new, different architecture that no one could clone because Intel had patents on key parts. They did. But it wasn't a better, new, different architecture. It was worse. So it seems headed for the Intel niche processor department, along with the i860 and i960, both of which are quite reasonable RISC machines that nobody cared about.

    AMD's 64-bit architecture is straightforward. It's IA-32 expanded to 64 bits, with a few more registers and some of the little-used stuff removed. That's not hard to support. With Linux support, that's likely to be the mainstream machine for cost-effective server farms for the next five years or so. Assuming AMD ships the thing soon.

  7. Re:This just seems wrong... by DaCool42 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well the whole point about the kernel is that you only compile in what you need. If you want a stripped down version, you can easily build it that way.

    --

    ----
    All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
  8. Re:When it's ready... by Gubble · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Giving people dates to catch is a Good Thing. The assumption is that it will be ready then, if everyone tries to make it ready at that time. I don't think if the kernel is not more-or-less ready, he will release it anyway.

  9. Re:When it's ready... by rgmoore · · Score: 4, Insightful

    AFAIK nothing happened to the "when it's ready" philosophy. But saying that it will actually be delieverd when it's ready doesn't preclude trying to estimate when that will be or trying to encourage people to get changes committed instead of procrastinating by giving reasonably hard deadlines. And that's what this is: it's an estimate of when things will be done and a target for developers to tell them when he wants them to be finished. It's certainly not a drop-dead, will be released by this date type of deadline.

    My impression from what I've read is that Linus is pretty happy with the features that have been implimented in the latest version, and that he thinks that most of the things that can actually be included within a reasonable time frame either have been put in already or can be put in by the end of the month. After that he plans a feature freeze, where no new things are added but existing features can still undergo changes, and then a code freeze, where no changes are allowed except for serious bug fixes. I don't see why it's unreasonable for him to give rough estimates of how long those things will take.

    --

    There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.

  10. Re:Transmeta by MentlFlos · · Score: 5, Insightful
    My brother has that neato little futitsu transmeta powered laptop. It isn't going to win any speed records, but it does a damn fine job at running VERY cool and it just sips the battery unlike all the intel laptops I have owned in the past (with the exception of my old toshiba p-266mmx... that thing was a tank).

    By far, it is not a desktop replacement, but when that isn't how you try and use it you are fine. Their cpu was not built to be a killer-super-fast-cpu (and it isn't). I bet if I sit you down on a computer powered by an 800mhz transmeta and a p4 2ghz, you won't even be able to tell the difference with "normal*" tasks.

    It all comes down to how one plans on using the technology. Just because _you_ think it is unacceptably slow does not mean others think the same thing. I used to upgrade my PC all the time because it just wasn't fast enough. I stopped doing that around the 1ghz mark because now it is fast enough. To throw a good quote in here... "A blur is just a blur." (this quote was back when doing a 'dir' in dos scrolled by in a blur on a 486sx-33, and it looked the same on a pentium-233.)

    *Normal being just checking mail, AIM (or your IM client of choice), Web browsing, Generic stuff like that. Of course this assumes that everything else is the same (HD speed, ram size etc).

    bah, I'll just submit this now

  11. Re:It's "GNU/Linux 2.6" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Meanwhile, you need to bend over and accept that Linux is a registered trademark owned by Linus Torvalds. Diluting that trademark (by saying things like "GNU/Linux," for example) is against the law. It doesn't matter how much GNU software Linus uses. He says to call it Linux, so you call it Linux, motherfucker.

    If you don't like it, go download FreeBSD. That way you don't have to deal with Linus or RMS. It wins two ways!

  12. Re:Wanna speed up the process? by dalutong · · Score: 4, Insightful


    They have a break; in there that doesn't belong. I removed it and it works. It is in EVERY kernel version. Why? No idea.


    because you never submitted a patch...

    --

    What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
  13. Re:No more 9.9-pre-beta-5116.0002-r3-pre-patch-ac4 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    informative? funny yes, informative no. jesus..moderators are on crack

  14. I disagree -- avoids inflation by 0x0d0a · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It isn't that there's a "fear of ...rollover". It's that open source types that aren't marketing their code have the luxury of making the version numbers actually mean something. Apps can change major version numbers when the file format changes. Libraries when compatibility-breaking ABI changes take place.

    If you have a marketing department, *they* want to jack the major version numbers constantly so that it looks like one "must" upgrade, or because it makes the changes look better.

    Frankly, I'd prefer 2.6 over 3.0. The kernel's performance has been improved, but there's been no rearchitecting. I consider it a bit of a mark of pride.

    Also, people complaining in many of these posts about the number of devel releases before a stable -- be sure that you aren't the *same* people complaining about lack of QA on the stable branch, as this is what it's intended to fix.