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Vanishing Features Of The 2.6 Kernel
chromatic writes "Jerry Cooperstein has written an excellent article summarizing the features removed from the upcoming 2.6 kernel. One controversial change may be tightening restrictions on binary-only modules." And Lovechild writes with some more 2.6 news: "I recently did an inteview with famous kernel hacker extraordinare and all round nice guy Robert M. Love for Tinyminds.org, about kernel 2.6 and what can be expected for desktop Linux users, when the new kernel series is released.
hopefully there wont be anything in the kernel related to the advertising. M$ .net sdeems to be paying for this article....
bite me
rainman
Nothing's vanished... just not included... now you too can learn to kernel hack!
www.superdorf.com
Pros:
Cons:
Have the kernel devs decided whether they are good or not?
-- Will program for bandwidth
I am an op in a Linux support channel on IRC, and I always dread new rleases of both kernels and redhat. It never fails.. some noobie comes in *demanding* we help him fix the production mail server he just trashed by installing RH8 or the newest kernel (dev or otherwise).
For anyone out there who is just waiting and drooling on themselves over 2.6, unless you NEED one of the few features present in a new kernel, you have no need to upgrade. The latest isn't always the greatest, and even "stable" releases need to go through testing before you put them in production.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
If non-GPL companies feel they can require users to install binary-only modules, why not simply requiring them to apply a kernel patch to remove this new limitation first?
Or, better still, why not delivering the whole product with an installer doing all this for them? It's not going to break GPL, as long as they publish the source code for the patch itself, which should be trivial.
I'm all for GPL, but this is not going to make that big an impact.
Score:-1, Wrong
See also: quickest way to discourage commercial development on your platform.
Gee, do you think all these corporations who have been embracing Linux in these past few years will still be using it when they can no longer use their expensive software investments with it? I doubt there are reasonable open source alternatives for most of these applications, like video card drivers or movie production applications, for example. Good luck on getting more people to adopt your platform after that.
I forsee a massive move to FreeBSD if this bullshit continues.
--sdem
Anyone know if Reiserfs4 got into the 2.6 release? I think I read Reiser had been pushing Linus to include Reiser4, and from what I've read in LinuxJournal, Reiser4 supposed to be 2-3 times faster than Reiser3.
Je ne parle pas francais.
As other posters have already specified, you can distribute your own kernel or patch that doesn't enforce the GPL license, but in doing so you may indeed be violating the GPL yourself. Remember, the GPL is like any other license, you must abide by it or lose the privelidge of using the software.
Also, this does not break userspace (i.e. proprietary and binary-only applications), unless such software is dependent on a binary-only module.
I, for one, am curious to see how those people who really want to distribute binary modules will react. I think many have a market in Linux systems and will continue to provide their code. However, they may be well-served to develop a GPL module that provides very consistent interfaces for binary-only modules. The kernel developers don't want to do this, but if developers of binary-only modules develop it and apply it, well that's their business.
I always get the shakes before a drop.
Jesus, give me some whitespace! At least a
here and there.
See how nice this looks?
Even if you make good points, nobody is going to read a long post with no whitespace.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
When a new product comes out on the market, the box almost always includes a cd with a windows driver on it. That driver is written and supported by the manufacturer of the product.
I love linux but I want so bad to be able to buy the latest neates thing and have it just work right away in linux and not a year later. Right now I have a radeon 9000 pro and a wintv pvr 250 I'm struggling with.
Drivers are the ONLY issue I have with linux and because of that I'm trying to learn C but I have so far to go and in the meantime I have to just be patient and wait for the vendor to produce a driver or for some linux developer go buy the same card I have and make it work. That's all fine and dandy except for this one thing: Some of these kernel developers are PAID to develop the linux kernel. That's right, it's their JOB. Not to show any disrespect to those kind hearted souls who sacrifice their spare time to do a community service, but as an enduser who has paid far far more for linux distro's than I ever would have paid if I was using Windows I have a right to insist on support for ME the end user. I have purchased Redhat 7.1, Mandrake 8.2,9.0 and every Suse since 6.2. It's my opinion that the kernel developer employed by the distro's have an obligation to develop the linux kernel with me in mind. And I want drivers. I don't care if they're GPL or not. I want hardware vendors to write the driver for the hardware they sell and distribute that driver WITH the hardware. And I want that driver to just work. That means the linux kernel must allow it to work. Politics and personal philosophy regarding open source have nothing to do with the discussion. I'm a paying customer and I should be treated that way.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Untrue. Most people are incapable of hacking kernel code, or any kind of code.
The kernel developers can use their abilities and positions to essentially blackmail the user base. New hardware drivers aren't usually backported to older kernels, so in order to get modern support for most things you have to run the latest. Want to run on modern hardware? You have to upgrade to a new kernel, with a new license, new restrictions, etc.
They don't owe you anything.
This is hilarious. You know, I once posted a rant on LKML about some particular issue (details unimportant). I essentially said that if it wasn't addressed, I might consider moving to BeOS (which was looking very good to me at the time). I have the freedom to make that choice, right? They don't OWE me anything, right? So clearly I most not owe THEM anything.
But I got several responses accusing me of BLACKMAIL, saying that I was "threatening" to move to BeOS in order to force someone to do something.
I could understand if there was some disagreement on a technical point, but by that point the conversation had degenerated into a flamethrowing competition between Andre Hendrick and the rest of the list. I was the only guy backing up Hendrick.
Anyway, I know from experience that many kernel developers are elitist, arrogant people. I guess they think that because their code runs in Ring 0 they must be somehow superior to the rest of us.
I've seen quite a few posts that seem to imply that binary modules cannot be used with the new kernel. That is not true.
What is true is that they are doing things like not exporting the system call table so that any module can change it at their will. That is, a binary module can't replace the write call or fork call. There are other mechanisms like syscall registering for modules that need some new system call. (I haven't looked into that aspect yet).
What they are doing is not encouraging binary only modules. (and by binary I mean non GPL). The example they use is the modification of work queues. Things like tainting the kernel (so the kernel knows when it's been tampered with by proprietary code (read loaded a non GPL module)) have been around for a while now. Kernel people will not give support to problems with tainted kernels.
I use and nvidia driver in one of my computers, and that taints my kernel. I understand the implications. I also see no reason why nvidia has to modify my syscall table.
In short, I don't think normal "drivers" need to modify the syscall table. You can add a new filesystem, network protocol, etc without the need to modify the syscall table. So stop complaining about no more binary only drivers.
I agree with the developers in the choice. I also wish nVidia, along with the other companies, GPLed their drivers. After all, they are _drivers_ for the hardware I bought. And if they don't want to, they could at least release the complete specifications for the hardware so we can build our own 3D accelerated drivers.
cl
Reply . . . let's get it over with.
I never said so on the list or in private to anyone. That's just how I feel about it.
The "rant" was the result of me being extremely pissed. And I believe justifiably so. There was something in the kernel that Andre considered a "defect." He had a simple piece of code to fix it. The kernel people rejected this, because "in theory, someone can get around this, so there's no point plugging a hole which someone can reopen."
At this point, I made some remark about how it would boost user morale if the patch were in place, regardless of any real technical merit. I made some statement to the effect of, "You guys should care more about what the users want, even if you think you know better than them." I didn't mean it in a combative sense. I was just growing irritated with their arrogance, and wanted to say so. I had earlier made some comment about how BeOS offered some feature that I wanted, and of course this got used as ammo against me, claiming that I was trying to blackmail the kernel developers by threatening to leave Linux -- as if my sole usership was pivotal to their existence. I'm not idiotic enough to make such a claim.
I've tried the "ya know, this really needs changing, and here's a few reasons why..." approach. The response I've gotten was "No. You're an idiot. Your idea is stupid. We'll never do that. Go away."
Kinda makes one bitter, you know...