Slashdot Mirror


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."

50 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. Are you sure ? by cOdEgUru · · Score: 5, Funny

    Or did he just have one too many Margaritas on the Cruise :)

  2. Translation... by lar3ry · · Score: 5, Funny

    This will be March, 2004 in "Linux Years."

    --
    "May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
    1. Re:Translation... by ralmeida · · Score: 5, Funny

      At least he didn't use "Debian Years"...

      --
      This space left intentionally blank.
    2. Re:Translation... by yobbo · · Score: 5, Funny

      or Duke Nukem/Falcon 4.0 years...

    3. Re:Translation... by PinkX · · Score: 4, Funny

      Or Microsoft Time, even... 17 seconds left... 45 seconds left... 3 minutes left... etc.

  3. 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?

    1. Re:I thought... by frp001 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Either they called it 3.0 and the release date was June 2004, or it was 2.6 and released June 2003...

      --
      May I use your sig please?
    2. Re:I thought... by cscx · · Score: 5, Funny

      Nah. As with most open-source projects, there is this sickly fear of ones-place-rollover in the version number. That's why you have so many programs with a version number like 0.9999.9.9.9.9.9.4

  4. 2.5.xx by NWT · · Score: 5, Funny

    If they continue like that, we'll soon have 2.5.100 ... chicks dig fancy kernel numbers.

    --
    Life sucks.
    1. 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.

      --
      Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
    2. Re:2.5.xx by dr_dank · · Score: 3, Funny

      Personally, I've got my money on Linux 2: Electric Bugaloo

      --
      Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
  5. 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? ;)

    --
    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 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?
    2. 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.

  6. Needs a better name by FearUncertaintyDoubt · · Score: 5, Funny

    How about "Linux XP" -- eXtended Procrastination

  7. 2.6?! by m0i · · Score: 5, Funny

    For most users, Linux is around 8.0 anyway :-) Don't ask'em the difference between linux and the packaging around it a.k.a distribution..

    --
    have you been defaced today?
    1. 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.

    2. Re:2.6?! by asteinberg · · Score: 3, Funny

      The thing I'm dreading about Linux hitting 3.0 is all the inevitable jokes posted to Slashdot about how they can't wait for Linux 3.1 or better still 3.11 for Workgroups. It seems to happen every time something closes in on that dreaded number (most recently with Debian and KDE).

      --
      The first ever Ultimate Frisbee video game: here (now
  8. 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.
  9. 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.

  10. 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.?

    --
    ------
    Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
    1. 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
    2. 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.

  11. 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...
  12. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  13. 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.

    --
    have you been defaced today?
    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).

  14. 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.

    --
    --= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
  15. WARNING: incorrect quote by kryps · · Score: 5, Informative

    He never said that.

    Nowhere in the article did he even imply anything like the last part of this quote (it's an all-new instruction set that the Transmeta Crusoe processors can't emulate). If you wanted to make a point you should have put this statement outside of the quote.

    I can't understand why the parent was modded up.

    -- kryps

  16. When 2.4 was released, didn't Linus say... by ScottBob · · Score: 5, Funny

    something to the effect of "Now you can hold your breath until 2.6 is released"?

  17. 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.

  18. Re:It's "GNU/Linux 2.6" by fok · · Score: 5, Informative

    No.. this is just the kernel... and it is called linux

    --
    \m/
  19. Re:Get some PRIORITIES! by Graspee_Leemoor · · Score: 5, Funny

    " I don't play RPGs, I have a JOB. I don't watch anime, I have a LIFE."

    The fact that you've posted 24 comments in the last 3 days on /. tells me otherwise.

    Anyway, for the record, I play RPGs, I don't have a job, I watch lots of anime. According to you I "have no life". Why is it that I am blissfully happy then ?

    graspee

  20. Robert Love predicts January 2004 by Xpilot · · Score: 4, Informative

    In this interview with Robert Love in July, he predicted 18 months before 2.6 gets released(that would make the release early in 2004).

    I'm more inclined to go with Robert Love's estimate considering 2.4's late release.

    Offtopic : Hey, my story submission got accepted! :) Now that's a first.

    --
    "Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
    1. Re:Robert Love predicts January 2004 by sagei · · Score: 5, Informative

      In this interview with Robert Love in July, he predicted 18 months before 2.6 gets released(that would make the release early in 2004).

      I'm more inclined to go with Robert Love's estimate considering 2.4's late release.


      I think I may need to revise that (although I did go on to say a year from then, which would be summer of 2003)... the kernel is remarkably stable at this point and if we can stick to the freeze and get enough testers, I really believe we can have a code freeze in early 2003 and a release not too long thereafter. Five or six months from now seems very doable.

      And I really encourage testers. We need you. Part of the VM debacle in 2.4 was we just did not understand the corner-cases because there were not enough testers testing on enough different machines on enough different workloads. We need to know where catatrophic VM failures are, where areas of high latency exist, and in general where the bad behavior is. This kernel is remarkably better in all aspects than 2.4... it is very smooth. But it needs testers to ease us into a stable release.

      --

      Robert Love

  21. 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::

  22. 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.

    2. Re:This just seems wrong... by PurpleBob · · Score: 3, Funny

      Since this is easily possible by just turning off (or on) certain options in the kernel configuration file, perhaps a better idea is to make some sort of "sock configurations."

      So then if the kernel doesn't compile, at least it can keep your feet warm.

      --
      Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
  23. 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.

    1. Re:Inanium by meringuoid · · Score: 3, Funny

      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.

      That's two sentences.

      --
      Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
  24. No more 9.9-pre-beta-5116.0002-r3-pre-patch-ac4-02 by dattaway · · Score: 4, Informative

    To prevent this dreaded war upon version numbers, a good formula would be something like:

    V=1-1/X

    As your revisions increment, you will be closer to the famed 1.0 release, but never quite there. The press can always ask, "ARE WE THERE YET?" and always be told, "IN A FEW MINUTES!"

  25. 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

  26. That feature list is just the late list by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    That list is just the list of features that are not yet merged and thus need an imminent decision before the feature freeze next Thursday. It's also not especially long or impressive, since these are minor features and a much greater number of patches of that kind are already in. Of the stuff on that list, probably only IPSEC and one of the LVM replacements (needed since LVM1 has been removed) will impact most users, though the crash dumps would also be nice.

    The significant changes in 2.6 will be the new block layer and attendant performance/scalability improvements, the new NPTL thread support, ALSA, and the XFS and JFS merges. See Guillaume Boissiere's list for more.

  27. pallidium support ? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 3, Funny
    Just kidding.

  28. Compatibility is not the issue by mbrubeck · · Score: 5, Informative
    Linux goes to 3.x when it breaks compatability with 2.x.

    Nope. In this lkml thread, Linus says:

    We've never had that as any criteria for major numbers in the kernel. Binary compatibility has _never_ been broken as a release policy, only as a "that code is old, and we've given people 5 years to migrate to the new system calls, the old ones are TOAST".

    The only policy for major numbers has always been "major capability changes". 1.0 was "networking is stable and generally usable" (by the standards of that time), while 2.0 was "SMP and true multi-architecture support". My planned point for 3.0 was NuMA support, but while we actually have some of that, the hardware just isn't relevant enough to matter.

  29. Kernel Traffic summary by mbrubeck · · Score: 3, Informative
    Kernel Traffic has a good summary of the 2.6 vs 3.0 discussion. In one post, Linus writes:
    I see no real reason to call it 3.0.

    The order-of-magnitude threading improvements might just come closest to being a "new thing", but yeah, I still consider it 2.6.x. We don't have new architectures or other really fundamental stuff. In many ways the jump from 2.2 -> 2.4 was bigger than the 2.4 -> 2.6 thing will be, I suspect.

    But hey, it's just a number. I don't feel that strongly either way. I think version number inflation (can anybody say "distribution makers"?) is a bit silly, and the way the kernel numbering works there is no reason to bump the major number for regular releases.

  30. 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.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  31. 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.