Posted by
timothy
on from the jamie-has-the-munchies dept.
punkmac writes "It's that time again to do the thing we all love to do, compile your shiny new kernel. This time its 2.4.20. The changelog can be found at the usual places, and please use a mirror for all your downloads"
No you stupid fool You're an insensitve clod I have no humor
Be kind to kernel.org
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Don't just use a mirror, get the patch to update your 2.4.19 tree.
Re:Be kind to kernel.org
by
packeteer
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
In case you wanna see if you even need the nwe kernel. You can find the changelog here. Dont download it now if you dont need it. there are peopel waiting to use those servers.
Re:Be kind to kernel.org
by
KjetilK
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Hm, I read that they've got a 250 Mbits/s link now, and I was going to respond "hey, let's stress-test it!" But www.kernel.org was very slow to me, in spite of that
Current bandwidth utilization 57.87 Mbit/s
That's actually rather weird, because it is not that uncommon to have that load. If this number is correct, there has to be something wrong with the server. But probably, they are getting more traffic.
Well me? I went directly to a mirror after getting the announcement from the announcement list this morning and downloaded it from there before reading/.
The new kernel fixes the lcall DoS. While I have no untrusted users on my system, things like that is always good to have out of the way.
-- Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
for all new users to linux...
by
fredopalus
·
· Score: 4, Funny
This may be the latest you've been up on thanksgiving.
Re:Decisions, Decisions...
by
The+Pi-Guy
·
· Score: 4, Funny
What makes you think they won't post it?
*ducks*
*counts to 20, formkeys formkeys formkeeeys*
Re:how long will it be...
by
silvaran
·
· Score: 5, Informative
It's not a matter of "Linux" having service packs. I'm assuming you use a specific distribution. You have to trust that distribution to release updates for your system as necessary. You can't binary patch the Linux kernel, because no binaries are released, only source. Red Hat, for example, has binary releases of the kernel (included in their distribution), but doesn't bother releasing service packs, instead they release updates as they see fit (pretty much the same thing).
I don't quite understand the obsession with using the latest and greatest. I'm not going to grab this and compile it for my machine; a) 2.4.19 works fine and b) I skimmed through the changelog and didn't really see anything that affected my situation, and c) My roommate will scream at me if I take down the server just to update the kernel by a double-point revision.
You mentioned when you update the kernel/compiler it breaks a lot of applications. You'll have to be more specific. I can see problems when migrating from a 2.2 kernel to a 2.4 kernel, or from gcc 2.x to gcc 3.x, but if you use one of the major distributions, this is trivial. The thought of using "service packs" on an open source operating system indicates to me that you don't have a clear handle on the way things work in Linux.
Re:how long will it be...
by
delta407
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Although I am an avid supporter of linux, I have alot of trouble keeping up with the latest version of my principal programs as well as the ever-changing kernal.
Then you would be aware that Linux is the kernel and nothing more. In this instance, your service pack is patch-2.4.20.bz2, and that's it.
installing service packs in windows2000/XP, it updated the kernal and main programs like IE and media player all at once
Here's the thing: Linux doesn't have programs tied into the operating system that much. You could have a running Linux system without using a single GNU tool. As such, proposing service packs for Linux is nonsensical.
but I won't begin to start using [Linux] as my primary OS untill it has service packs.
Linux itself has service packs. Your distribution, on the other hand, is responsible for the rest of the pieces of software on your computer, and each distro has a different means of staying current. RedHat has up2date, Debian has 'apt-get update', and Gentoo has 'emerge -u'. Take your pick.
When's the duplicate show up?
by
Flamesplash
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Hmm this isn't that interesting, I think I'll just wait around for the duplicate article post, maybe it'll be more interesting.;)
-- "Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
you can do what I'm about to do and change my/. settings to ignore kernel stuff.
Now, how exactly am I going to change your settings?
small VM updates...
by
kinko
·
· Score: 5, Informative
From the changelog....
<hch@lst.de>:
o dump_stack()
o backport yield() and conditional reschedule changes from
o small VM updates from -aa (1/5)
o small VM updates from -aa (2/5)
o small VM updates from -aa (4/5)
o small VM updates from -aa (5/5)
Is this using a Linus definition of small, or a normal definition of small?
Re:small VM updates...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Is this using a Linus definition of small, or a normal definition of small?
It's small because part (3/5) contains all the code.
Timothy, haven't you learned your lesson and started paying attention to what you're posting already? I mean, you've already done this today and--
Wait a sec...
Oh sorry, I guess I was developing a reflex action.
</humour>
Re:Important changes?
by
updog
·
· Score: 5, Informative
There was at least one very important change for me personally - support for KT-400 motherboards (by adding support for VIA8235 southbridge). I had gotten 2.4.20-rc3 for this support when I got my new motherboard, but now it's official.
Incedentally, 2.4.19 will sorta work on a KT-400 board, but disk access is really slow because it can't turn on DMA.
Actually no, it's all pretty much the same. At least it might as well be, from the discussions...
--
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Did they fix the new ptrace vulnerability?
by
bigberk
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I haven't tried it myself yet, but I found no reference to this ptrace vulnerability in the changelog. I suspect this is still a problem (it was in 2.4.19).
Re:Did they fix the new ptrace vulnerability?
by
Juergen+Kreileder
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I haven't tried it myself yet, but I found no reference to this ptrace vulnerability [google.com] in the changelog. I suspect this is still a problem (it was in 2.4.19).
It was fixed in 2.4.20-rc2, see the "[PATCH] Fix lcall DoS" entry in the ChangeLog or this bk comment (and the corresponding patch).
For anyone using reiserfs
by
Xpilot
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
There is a significant patch that speeds up write operations for large files on IDE drives by up to 15%. This made it in v2.4.20-pre6.
-- "Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Re:For anyone using reiserfs
by
kinri
·
· Score: 3, Informative
2.4.20-pre6 came out before 2.4.20-rc4 === 2.4.19 was released
2.4.20-pre1 to 2.4.20-pre11 were released
2.4.20-rc1 to 2.4.20-rc4 were released
2.4.20-rc4 became 2.4.20
Pre's come before rc's (release candidates)
Re:I'll wait for 2.4.20-ac1 or -ac2. :)
by
darketernal
·
· Score: 5, Informative
You do realize 2.4.20-rc4 was released as 2.4.20 without any changes. Hence, 2.4.20-rc4-ac1 is the -ac1 that you are looking for:)
These changelogs are getting too long...
by
7-Vodka
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
They need to be put in a database so you can click on a hardware device and get a list of patches applied with other query parameters for example.
just my $2*10^-2.00
--
Liberty.
No more printers on fire?
by
xercist
·
· Score: 5, Funny
just reading through the changelog...
Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk): ...
* replace end user confusing "on fire" joke with real info ...
We've just lost the best part of our kernel!
--
--
grep "xercist"/dev/random...you'll find me in there someday
How is this impressive?
by
7-Vodka
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I've released a total of 0 kernels so far and I intend to release a total of 0 more kernels for the next many many months to come. By your rating Linus' got nothin on me:)
--
Liberty.
Re:Linux is truely impressing me now...
by
Webmonger
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Shakedown. All kernels take a while to mature. 2.4 took longer than most.
use the mirrors to download the changelog
by
mansoft
·
· Score: 4, Funny
With changes such as "fixed typo in whatever.c" or "It didn't compile because a semicolon was missing, so I added it", we'll soon need to create ISO images for the changelogs...
Re:use the mirrors to download the changelog
by
suwain_2
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
What I've always wondered is this -- don't they notice that their program doesn't compile, and fix it before releasing it? It's easy to forget a semicolon on the end of a line, but I can't say I've ever released a program that had fatal compile errors. Is there something behind the scenes I'm missing?
-- ________________________________________________
suwain_2:: quality slashdot p
This kernel perfectly works. I just installed it and it didn't cra
-- {{.sig}}
Re:Apparently
by
mysticalreaper
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Uhm... are you SURE? You sure it's not the new 2.5 development kernel you're talking about? Cause i think if you looked into it, you'd realize that all these massive changes you mentioned, improving threading, I/O, VM and the rest are changes happening in the 2.5 kernel. They are major changes, and very significant. But they're happening in 2.5.
This release is just an incremental release. Bugfixes here, added support there... no major changes, just evolutionary changes.
Good to see the mods are looking for informative comments... however, it's sad when they mod up comments that don't reflect the facts.
The great thing about open source:
by
achurch
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Re:Important changes?
by
thesadmac
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I beleive the reiserfs write_file function was added to the reiserfs filesystem. This speeds up writing large files on a reiserfs formatted volume. Which on my boxes is every partition except/boot and swap.
Tips on testing your new kernel
by
goingware
·
· Score: 5, Informative
You should thoroughly test your new kernel before putting it into production. Even if the kernel works well for everyone else, you could personally discover a new bug. You could save yourself a lot of pain by testing first, as well as help the kernel developers.
A while back I wrote a couple articles on Linux kernel testing:
The Open Source Development Lab kindly provides Japanese translations
here.
(The articles are under the GNU Free Documentation License. I would be quite stoked if you copied or translated them. There are articles on other quality topics
here.)
How to get patches accepted?
by
caluml
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
[PATCH] : sock_writable not appropriate for TCP sockets
hi marcelo-
[ i sent this patch August 30 against 20-pre5, and it appears to have been
dropped. this is an important performance fix that should be included in
2.4.20. i apologize for not tracking this more closely. ]
sock_writeable determines whether there is space in a socket's output
buffer. socket write_space callbacks use it to determine whether to wake
up those that are waiting for more output buffer space.
however, sock_writeable is not appropriate for TCP sockets. because the
RPC client's write_space callback uses it for TCP sockets, the RPC layer
hammers on sock_sendmsg with dozens of write requests that are only a few
hundred bytes long when it is trying to send a large write RPC request.
this patch adds logic to the RPC layer's write_space callback that
properly handles TCP sockets.
patch reviewed by Trond, Alexey, and DaveM, and already accepted in 2.5.
I wonder if I can get the name changed from Linux to Evilix by sending a patch to Marcelo and just mentioning that Trond, Alexey and DaveM have reviewed it and it's already in 2.5...;)
Re:Is VIA KT400 (8377+8235) finally supported?
by
Brissie_lad
·
· Score: 3, Informative
8235 support is in,
vojtech_suse.cz
[PATCH] Add vt8235 support
Hi!
This patch adds support for the vt8235. Marcelo, please apply it to current 2.4.20 rc. It doesn't break anything, basically adds an entry to the table of supported devices. Thanks.
If you do a search of the changelog for 8235 you'll find it.
IIRC, it wasn't so much the patch itself that was in violation of the DMCA (Dilbertized Merkin Copyright Anomaly) as the description of the problem. So I can't describe it to you, but if you *aren't* American, you can safely click on this link, which will tell you. (Read & click-through the licence/disclaimer, then pick it off the drop-down menu thingy. Yeah, it sucks, but so does a copyright law that prevents people from fully documenting software bugs. Sorta like the evening news in some places--"Scientists think this common household substance could kill you! We'll tell you more on Channel 11's News at Eleven!")
Having read both the changelog and searched the kernel archives it's interesting to note that way back in 2.4.20-pre3 the Athlon MP/XP prefetch bug work around was pulled out of the kernel.
Subsiquently, Alan Cox in the kernel mailing list archives responds to someone asking about this and says that he thinks some of the VM changes have fixed at least the AGP problems but not the mmap ones, to quote:-
-ac has it removed. I didn't know Marcelo had it removed. Andi Kleen has
a patch for doing most of the right things without trashing performance.
That may be what Marcelo merged. It fixed AGP but not O_SYNC mmap I
believe
this was posted on the 17th August and there's no further mention of the problem as far as I can see.
If this hasn't been fixed in the full 2.4.20 release then there is no way I can install this kernel on our three dual processor Athlon MP boxes we use for mathematical simulations as the machines need to be able to run for many weeks on the problems and hence have to be rock-solid stable.
Does anyone know if the new VM fixes fully fix the Athlon MP/XP problems?
I've been programming for a long time. I'm good at it, and I suppose if I really put some time into coding for a Free Software project, I could do a lot of good.
But most of my contribution to Free Software has really been in the form of writing. I have also written a lot of stuff which is not copylefted, but posted publicly on the web.
here some more as well as
this.
I have contributed some to
zoolib, but that's mostly in the form of qa, project management (for the initial open source release) and marketing.
One reason I prefer to contribute by writing is that my normal programming work is so hard, that when I get time to take a break from it, it's difficult to work up much enthusiasm to write more code, no matter how fun the project might be. I imagine that's a common problem.
Another reason is that I feel that any contribution I could make to Free Software, at least in the limited time I have, would be small. I could fix some bugs, add some features, do some testing. But how many people would benefit from my personal contribution? I don't think that many would, at least not until I had the time to develop a really serious package, and I just don't have the energy for that. I have lots of ideas, but no time.
But I feel that passing on my experience by writing can benefit others far out of proportion to the effort I put in. That is because I aim my writing to enable others to do better. By writing well, I enable many other developers to code a little better, and many users to do better testing and bug reporting.
I could lead by example by writing good code, but how many people would learn by reading it? When's the last time you studied the source for some package you weren't really actively involved with? Prose is much more accessible.
This is all the more important because so few engineers of any sort are good writers. When my father was a civilian electrical engineer for the Navy, the shipyard sent him to a writing class so he could write better test plans! The man has a master's degree! But the Navy put lots of people through that class because so many of their engineers didn't know how to write.
What is funny is that I find writing much more difficult than programming. With software, you know when you're wrong. It's not always so clear with writing. The main reason I write so well is because most of my effort is put into editing - and I still find lots of mistakes later.
Even more ironic is that I used to hate writing with a passion. One major reason is that I have terrible handwriting - I can't read my own handwriting, and can't imagine how anyone else could. But the schools always used to require handwritten essays. They used to send me to remedial handwriting classes, which I really hated because they made my hand hurt. It's painful for me to write much by hand.
What did it for me was two things - a composition class I took at the community college during the summer when I was sixteen, that was just really well taught, and being able to type. I type really fast now, and there's no pain.
My senior year Advanced Placement English Teacher asked me to drop the class because of my poor handwriting. He was quite taken aback when I started screaming at him. I'd had enough of teachers criticizing my handwriting, I didn't need to hear it again when I was seventeen years old.
He was concerned that I couldn't pass the exam (which could get me college credit) because the judges wouldn't be able to read my essays.
He proposed a compromise. He suggested that I block print.
I had no problem with that. And at the exam at the end of the year, I turned in my exam neatly block-printed in all capital letters. I just used bigger capitals for where a capital was really required.
I was the only student in my school that year to get a 5 on the english AP exam (a perfect score).
mirrors and P2P
by
silence535
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
..can be found at the usual places, and please use a mirror for all your downloads"
Apologies if this has been discussed before and I missed it. (If so, ignore and silently send me the link to the discussion please.)
Why don't the kernel guys distribute the kernel sources over the well established P2P networks to reduce load on their servers and to speed up downloads for everyone?
I mean, why not put it into the donkey and publish the e2k link on the official kernel.org web page and also submit it to the sharereactor?
MD5 or other hashing can guarantee that the official release has not been tampered with.
Am I missing something here?
silence
-- Dyslectics of the world, untie!
Re:zlib in the kernel?
by
TeknoHog
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
There is also zisofs -- read-only support of compressed ISO CDs. In read-only systems the compression actually makes sense, because the size does not change, and decompression is much faster than compression. To use these, you need additional tools, probably called mkzisofs.
Unfortunately, many CDs are used to store mp3/ogg/divx and the like, which don't really compress much. So zisofs is not necessarily very useful.
-- Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
VESA Local Bus
by
Zymurgy
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Reading the changelog, I was just happy to see they updated the drivers for the Adaptec AHA-2840 VLB SCSI controller and the SMC 91C92 Ethernet chip, which is found on my VESA Local Bus Ethernet cards. Ah, I'm thrilled because I just so happen to be building a file server right now that uses both.
Hey, you can't tell me I'm the only person in here who uses the VESA Local Bus on his servers!!!
Slashdot Mirror
...already downloaded, and already compiled. With 2 minutes of testing, I can garantee that this is the best one ever...
Why did I post this? Ask me now!
As snow is falling
A new kernel is released.
Truly, it is good.
A tree, bare of leaves.
A kernel, being released.
Note nature tie-in.
Don't give me none of this "nature theme" business.
Don't just use a mirror, get the patch to update your 2.4.19 tree.
This may be the latest you've been up on thanksgiving.
Jonahweb.com has stuff.
What makes you think they won't post it?
*ducks*
*counts to 20, formkeys formkeys formkeeeys*
It's not a matter of "Linux" having service packs. I'm assuming you use a specific distribution. You have to trust that distribution to release updates for your system as necessary. You can't binary patch the Linux kernel, because no binaries are released, only source. Red Hat, for example, has binary releases of the kernel (included in their distribution), but doesn't bother releasing service packs, instead they release updates as they see fit (pretty much the same thing).
I don't quite understand the obsession with using the latest and greatest. I'm not going to grab this and compile it for my machine; a) 2.4.19 works fine and b) I skimmed through the changelog and didn't really see anything that affected my situation, and c) My roommate will scream at me if I take down the server just to update the kernel by a double-point revision.
You mentioned when you update the kernel/compiler it breaks a lot of applications. You'll have to be more specific. I can see problems when migrating from a 2.2 kernel to a 2.4 kernel, or from gcc 2.x to gcc 3.x, but if you use one of the major distributions, this is trivial. The thought of using "service packs" on an open source operating system indicates to me that you don't have a clear handle on the way things work in Linux.
Here's the thing: Linux doesn't have programs tied into the operating system that much. You could have a running Linux system without using a single GNU tool. As such, proposing service packs for Linux is nonsensical.
Linux itself has service packs. Your distribution, on the other hand, is responsible for the rest of the pieces of software on your computer, and each distro has a different means of staying current. RedHat has up2date, Debian has 'apt-get update', and Gentoo has 'emerge -u'. Take your pick.
Hmm this isn't that interesting, I think I'll just wait around for the duplicate article post, maybe it'll be more interesting. ;)
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
I'll smoke a bowl for its release!
you can do what I'm about to do and change my /. settings to ignore kernel stuff.
Now, how exactly am I going to change your settings?
From the changelog....
<hch@lst.de>:
o dump_stack()
o backport yield() and conditional reschedule changes from
o small VM updates from -aa (1/5)
o small VM updates from -aa (2/5)
o small VM updates from -aa (4/5)
o small VM updates from -aa (5/5)
Is this using a Linus definition of small, or a normal definition of small?
Wait a sec...
Oh sorry, I guess I was developing a reflex action.
</humour>
There was at least one very important change for me personally - support for KT-400 motherboards (by adding support for VIA8235 southbridge). I had gotten 2.4.20-rc3 for this support when I got my new motherboard, but now it's official.
Incedentally, 2.4.19 will sorta work on a KT-400 board, but disk access is really slow because it can't turn on DMA.
I don't know what the slashdot editors are on today. This has already been covered here and here and here.
Wait a minute. Do those funny little numbers after the name actually mean something? Oh well, nevermind.
I haven't tried it myself yet, but I found no reference to this ptrace vulnerability in the changelog. I suspect this is still a problem (it was in 2.4.19).
Where can I download the windows version?
Read reviews of shopping cart software
There is a significant patch that speeds up write operations for large files on IDE drives by up to 15%. This made it in v2.4.20-pre6.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
You do realize 2.4.20-rc4 was released as 2.4.20 without any changes. Hence, 2.4.20-rc4-ac1 is the -ac1 that you are looking for :)
just my $2*10^-2.00
Liberty.
just reading through the changelog...
...
...
Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk):
* replace end user confusing "on fire" joke with real info
We've just lost the best part of our kernel!
--
grep "xercist"
I've released a total of 0 kernels so far and I intend to release a total of 0 more kernels for the next many many months to come. By your rating Linus' got nothin on me :)
Liberty.
Shakedown. All kernels take a while to mature. 2.4 took longer than most.
With changes such as "fixed typo in whatever.c" or "It didn't compile because a semicolon was missing, so I added it", we'll soon need to create ISO images for the changelogs...
Engage!
This kernel perfectly works. I just installed it and it didn't cra
{{.sig}}
Uhm... are you SURE? You sure it's not the new 2.5 development kernel you're talking about? Cause i think if you looked into it, you'd realize that all these massive changes you mentioned, improving threading, I/O, VM and the rest are changes happening in the 2.5 kernel. They are major changes, and very significant. But they're happening in 2.5.
This release is just an incremental release. Bugfixes here, added support there... no major changes, just evolutionary changes.
Good to see the mods are looking for informative comments... however, it's sad when they mod up comments that don't reflect the facts.
Here's a patch to put it back.
I beleive the reiserfs write_file function was added to the reiserfs filesystem. This speeds up writing large files on a reiserfs formatted volume. Which on my boxes is every partition except /boot and swap.
A while back I wrote a couple articles on Linux kernel testing:
-
Why We Should All Test the New Linux Kernel
-
Using Test Suites to Validate the Linux Kernel
The Open Source Development Lab kindly provides Japanese translations here.(The articles are under the GNU Free Documentation License. I would be quite stoked if you copied or translated them. There are articles on other quality topics here.)
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
[PATCH] : sock_writable not appropriate for TCP sockets
hi marcelo-
[ i sent this patch August 30 against 20-pre5, and it appears to have been dropped. this is an important performance fix that should be included in 2.4.20. i apologize for not tracking this more closely. ]
sock_writeable determines whether there is space in a socket's output buffer. socket write_space callbacks use it to determine whether to wake up those that are waiting for more output buffer space.
however, sock_writeable is not appropriate for TCP sockets. because the RPC client's write_space callback uses it for TCP sockets, the RPC layer hammers on sock_sendmsg with dozens of write requests that are only a few hundred bytes long when it is trying to send a large write RPC request. this patch adds logic to the RPC layer's write_space callback that properly handles TCP sockets.
patch reviewed by Trond, Alexey, and DaveM, and already accepted in 2.5.
I wonder if I can get the name changed from Linux to Evilix by sending a patch to Marcelo and just mentioning that Trond, Alexey and DaveM have reviewed it and it's already in 2.5...
Get your own free personal location tracker
8235 support is in,
vojtech_suse.cz
[PATCH] Add vt8235 support
Hi!
This patch adds support for the vt8235. Marcelo, please apply it to current 2.4.20 rc. It doesn't break anything, basically adds an entry to the table of supported devices.
Thanks.
If you do a search of the changelog for 8235 you'll find it.
Slackware - because apt is for the lazy.
IIRC, it wasn't so much the patch itself that was in violation of the DMCA (Dilbertized Merkin Copyright Anomaly) as the description of the problem. So I can't describe it to you, but if you *aren't* American, you can safely click on this link, which will tell you. (Read & click-through the licence/disclaimer, then pick it off the drop-down menu thingy. Yeah, it sucks, but so does a copyright law that prevents people from fully documenting software bugs. Sorta like the evening news in some places--"Scientists think this common household substance could kill you! We'll tell you more on Channel 11's News at Eleven!")
Click here if you just like to click on shit.
its used by PPP for packet compression, as well as initial kernel decompression with the zImage target.
Subsiquently, Alan Cox in the kernel mailing list archives responds to someone asking about this and says that he thinks some of the VM changes have fixed at least the AGP problems but not the mmap ones, to quote:-
-ac has it removed. I didn't know Marcelo had it removed. Andi Kleen has a patch for doing most of the right things without trashing performance. That may be what Marcelo merged. It fixed AGP but not O_SYNC mmap I believe
this was posted on the 17th August and there's no further mention of the problem as far as I can see.
If this hasn't been fixed in the full 2.4.20 release then there is no way I can install this kernel on our three dual processor Athlon MP boxes we use for mathematical simulations as the machines need to be able to run for many weeks on the problems and hence have to be rock-solid stable.
Does anyone know if the new VM fixes fully fix the Athlon MP/XP problems?
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
But most of my contribution to Free Software has really been in the form of writing. I have also written a lot of stuff which is not copylefted, but posted publicly on the web. here some more as well as this.
I have contributed some to zoolib, but that's mostly in the form of qa, project management (for the initial open source release) and marketing.
One reason I prefer to contribute by writing is that my normal programming work is so hard, that when I get time to take a break from it, it's difficult to work up much enthusiasm to write more code, no matter how fun the project might be. I imagine that's a common problem.
Another reason is that I feel that any contribution I could make to Free Software, at least in the limited time I have, would be small. I could fix some bugs, add some features, do some testing. But how many people would benefit from my personal contribution? I don't think that many would, at least not until I had the time to develop a really serious package, and I just don't have the energy for that. I have lots of ideas, but no time.
But I feel that passing on my experience by writing can benefit others far out of proportion to the effort I put in. That is because I aim my writing to enable others to do better. By writing well, I enable many other developers to code a little better, and many users to do better testing and bug reporting.
I could lead by example by writing good code, but how many people would learn by reading it? When's the last time you studied the source for some package you weren't really actively involved with? Prose is much more accessible.
This is all the more important because so few engineers of any sort are good writers. When my father was a civilian electrical engineer for the Navy, the shipyard sent him to a writing class so he could write better test plans! The man has a master's degree! But the Navy put lots of people through that class because so many of their engineers didn't know how to write.
What is funny is that I find writing much more difficult than programming. With software, you know when you're wrong. It's not always so clear with writing. The main reason I write so well is because most of my effort is put into editing - and I still find lots of mistakes later.
Even more ironic is that I used to hate writing with a passion. One major reason is that I have terrible handwriting - I can't read my own handwriting, and can't imagine how anyone else could. But the schools always used to require handwritten essays. They used to send me to remedial handwriting classes, which I really hated because they made my hand hurt. It's painful for me to write much by hand.
What did it for me was two things - a composition class I took at the community college during the summer when I was sixteen, that was just really well taught, and being able to type. I type really fast now, and there's no pain.
My senior year Advanced Placement English Teacher asked me to drop the class because of my poor handwriting. He was quite taken aback when I started screaming at him. I'd had enough of teachers criticizing my handwriting, I didn't need to hear it again when I was seventeen years old.
He was concerned that I couldn't pass the exam (which could get me college credit) because the judges wouldn't be able to read my essays.
He proposed a compromise. He suggested that I block print.
I had no problem with that. And at the exam at the end of the year, I turned in my exam neatly block-printed in all capital letters. I just used bigger capitals for where a capital was really required.
I was the only student in my school that year to get a 5 on the english AP exam (a perfect score).
Request your free CD of my piano music.
..can be found at the usual places, and please use a mirror for all your downloads"
Apologies if this has been discussed before and I missed it. (If so, ignore and silently send me the link to the discussion please.)
Why don't the kernel guys distribute the kernel sources over the well established P2P networks to reduce load on their servers and to speed up downloads for everyone?
I mean, why not put it into the donkey and publish the e2k link on the official kernel.org web page and also submit it to the sharereactor?
MD5 or other hashing can guarantee that the official release has not been tampered with.
Am I missing something here?
silence
Dyslectics of the world, untie!
Unfortunately, many CDs are used to store mp3/ogg/divx and the like, which don't really compress much. So zisofs is not necessarily very useful.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Reading the changelog, I was just happy to see they updated the drivers for the Adaptec AHA-2840 VLB SCSI controller and the SMC 91C92 Ethernet chip, which is found on my VESA Local Bus Ethernet cards. Ah, I'm thrilled because I just so happen to be building a file server right now that uses both.
Hey, you can't tell me I'm the only person in here who uses the VESA Local Bus on his servers!!!
-Lawrence
Visit Zymurgy Records!
For those of you looking for the vserver with security contexts patch for 2.4.20.