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Linus says 2.6 kernel will be out by June 2003

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the believe-it-when-you-see-it dept.

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."

16 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. Wanna speed up the process? by GreyWolf3000 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    After the feature freeze, if as many people as possible test out the new features and provide bug reports to work on, maybe the impending issues can be fleshed out sooner.

    Unless, of course, Linus decides that there must be a set time between when the features are frozen and when the firse betas hit the servers.

    I'm getting fairly excited about this, even though I don't plan on using any of these new features. Does that mean I read /. too much? ;)

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    Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
    1. Re:Wanna speed up the process? by Whelkman · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I regularly report bugs for certain pieces of software, but the kernel is too big of a beast for me. It is considered uncouth to report bugs which have already been reported, but you have to be kidding me if you think I have the time or perseverance to trudge through megabytes of mailing lists.

      Another problem is that of information gathering. With something like Gaim or XMMS I can accumulate all I need in a few minutes and fire off a bug report, but proper kernel debugging requires time consuming dumps and backtraces. However, since the kernel now officially supports a fairly modern compiler (GCC 2.95.3), one no longer has to downgrade to the stone age to properly debug.

      The 2.5 branch has been infinitely less stable for me compared to 2.3. Out of the twenty or so point releases I've tried, only three have actually booted. All have panicked when I tried to actually do something beyond log in at a prompt. My hardware is far from exotic (and is rock solid under 2.4, just to quell those accusations), so I assume the developers are aware of such showstoppers.

      Now I'm not insinuating the kernel is a crappy piece of software or whatever. In fact, I'm fairly convinced my problems are the fault of Via weirdness, but it's hard to test something which won't even boot properly, and I've run out of patience trying 2.5 builds.

      I guess you could say I'm lazy, but I'd rather do nothing at all than fill lists with halfway done bug reports, and I'm not dedicated enough to delve completely into 2.5's issues.

  2. Re:2.5.xx by GreyWolf3000 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    High teeny version numbers are not uncommon in devel branches.

    The 2.1 series got as high as 2.1.132.

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    Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
  3. Re:Transmeta by cmeans · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Maybe because he's a human being and he's not happy that Intel has a strategy that could impact Transmeta (his employer) in a negative way.

    --
    Give a hand, not a hand-out.
  4. Re:Transmeta by James+Skarzinskas · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I do find it curious that every time CNET posts an article about GNU/Linux that they make sure to include how Torvalds flames or doesn't support some massive product line. I'm guessing they just don't want to make him come across with the public very well.

  5. When it's ready... by NewbieSpaz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What ever happened to the saying "When it's ready"? Or is that just a Redhat/Debian specific philos.?

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    ------
    Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
    1. Re:When it's ready... by rgmoore · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It is a vaguely interesting thing. A coworker once mentioned a word that she typed entirely with one hand and speculated about what the longest such word was. Being a geek, I thought that the obvious solution was to write a perl script to find out. I found that the longest words that could be typed entirely with one hand (the left) were 12 letters long; the only one that might actually be used in ordinary usage was stewardesses. ISTR that the longest word typed entirely with the right hand was only 9 letters, but I don't remember any examples.

      --

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

  6. Huh? by StarHeart · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have been hearing a feature freeze for early November. Can it really take 7-8 months to go from feature freeze to a final version? Or is Linus actually planning to make 2.6.0 what 2.X.18+ quality?

    --
    Havoc Penington, the bane of my Linux desktop.
    1. Re:Huh? by be-fan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yeah, it takes a long time to get something release quality. 2.5.44 is already quite usable...if it compiles at all that is. It's that seemingly last little bit (getting all the old drivers updated to new interfaces, polishing up code, last minute bug fixes) that take a long time. Also, there are certain features (like Reiser4) that'll probably sneak in slightly after the feature freeze, because they don't really touch core code. From Kernel Traffic:

      Elsewhere, someone said they'd love to test these heading-toward-stable kernels, but didn't want to risk trashing their filesystem. They asked how likely that would be, and Linus replied:

      "Personal opinion (and only that): not much chance for a filesystem trashing. There's more chance of something just not _working_ than of disk corruption. Ie you may find that some driver you need doesn't compile because it hasn't been updated to the new world order yet, for example.
      And people still report problems booting, for example, whatever the reason. So make sure you have a working choice in your lilo configuration or whatever. But from what we've seen lately, there really aren't reports of corrupted disks or anything like that that I've seen. Which is obviously not to say that it couldn't happen, but it's not a very likely occurrence.
      That said, I can't set other peoples risk bars for them."

      --
      A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
  7. minor vs. major by m0i · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Btw, what would be the killer new stuff in the current devel kernel granting it a major version number upgrade to 3.0 instead of the regular minor to 2.6? They must have a good reason to do so, me thinks.

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    1. Re:minor vs. major by iabervon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There isn't a killer new feature this time. It's really the large number of major features since 2.X started. They didn't change all that much since 2.4, but there's very little that hasn't changed since 2.0, and it doesn't make sense to never change the major number just because you improve things at a steady rate.

      Or you could say that the number of minor version increases exponentially with respect to the major number, and, since the major number changed after 1.2, it should clearly change after 2.(2^2).

  8. Docked in Jamaica. by Forge · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The cruise docked in Jamaica and everybody had a ball.

    We were told that just a few of the speakers would be presenting in Jamaica so 3 of us drove down to the pier to colect them.

    Ha.

    we neaded all 3 cars plus 2 busses to haul them to "the Ruins". We sat ESR and Linux on a panel with 4 other senior geaks and asked them some lame questions for an hour or so.

    All the baby Linuses were there and Tove is realy cool. everybody seams to think the Coffee here is great (exact words: "The best I have ever tasted") so we will try to have a few bags ready for the next deligation.

    PS: No the Geak Cruise dosn't normaly hold talks on land for the locals. However JaLUG asked nicely :).

    Kevin Forge.
    Jamaica Linux Users Group. JaLUG
    Founding member.

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    --= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
  9. Re:Get some PRIORITIES! by Atrapose · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The Linux kernel is the largest work of collaborative genius that exists in today's software community. It's become important because people care about it (and its version numbers). A nerd is defined by his/her passion for technology. If you suggest they change their focus, then you're asking them to give in to the asses who tried to change my nation.

    Events that shape history need to be presented as history. If we continue to live out the horrors of our generation each day, nothing will get done. If a nerd somewhere sat on his ass playing video games before these attacks, then playing video games again _is_ getting on with life.

    If you want to help: survive; don't whine. So go away you... you... poo-poo head! :-

    ::I copied your sig::

  10. This just seems wrong... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Ok, I can understand shoveling features into the kernel for fun, but I think that things are getting way beyond what is necessary for the real beach-head -- the desktop.

    I think it is time for a fork. DTLinux and SVLinux. DT for the desktop, SV for servers. I mean really, does Oscar Office Worker really need to hot swap processors? Come ON!.

    This is getting way out of hand, and resources that could be foucssed on the battle for the destkop (BFD (haha)) are being wasted on some sort of kernal probe thing that sounds painfull.

    Seriously, don't you think this kernel feature thing needs to stop!.

    -- ac ah home

    1. Re:This just seems wrong... by Hrunting · · Score: 5, Interesting

      All right, I'll bite.

      That's why you run through the configuration utility before you compile the kernel. You don't need to branch the kernel source to limit features in the kernel. You just don't select them when you compile the kernel. Voila. Your kernel does not have those features. Do you think when Oscar Office Worker got that copy of Windows 2000 Workstation and Mitch MIS Admin got that copy of Windows 2000 Server, they came from different source repositories? I doubt it.

      With that said, the kernel source is getting gigantic, and it would be nice if they released source bundles geared towards those who might be compiling in more desktop-oriented features and those who might be compiling for a server.

  11. Some CRUCIAL patches here by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    7) High resolution timers (George Anzinger, etc.) Home page: http://high-res-timers.sourceforge.net/ Sourceforge download page for this patch: http://sourceforge.net/projects/high-res-timers Descriptions of each patch: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=103 557676007653&w=2 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=103 557677207693&w=2 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=103 558349714128&w=2 Linus had concerns with this one (possibly resolved?): http://lists.insecure.org/lists/linux-kernel/2002/ Oct/3463.html

    A must for embedded systems.

    13) MMU-less processor support (Greg Ungerer) Announcement with lots of links: http://lists.insecure.org/lists/linux-kernel/2002/ Oct/7027.html

    Makes Linux dramatically more useful (without funky patching) for (again) embedded systems, especially given the coldfire 683xx support.

    11) Kexec, luanch new linux kernel from Linux (Eric W. Biederman) Announcement with links: http://lists.insecure.org/lists/linux-kernel/2002/ Oct/6584.html And this thread is just too brazen not to include: http://lists.insecure.org/lists/linux-kernel/2002/ Oct/7952.html

    What can I say about this? Another must for embedded systems, and really nice for an enterprise-wide context.

    20) Initramfs (Al Viro) Way back when, Al said: http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001- 30/0110.html I THINK this is the most recent patch: ftp://ftp.math.psu.edu/pub/viro/N0-initramfs-C40 And Linus recently made happy noises about the idea: http://lists.insecure.org/lists/linux-kernel/2002/ Oct/1110.html

    Need I tell you why this is handy?

    I'll settle for just the above features but the LVM patches seem like they'd be insanely handy, the console rewrite seems like a very good idea, and the non-high-resolution POSIX timers are a good idea, too. Anything POSIX should be a priority since (hopefully) it makes code more willing to compile on more platforms. Provided people actually use the calls correctly.

    --
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