Kernel 2.2 - It Lives!

Build6 writes "For those of us still using 2.2 (how's that for "conservatism" eh?) -- 2.2.24 is out (and has been since last week) - see kernel.org for downloads. I see networking code tweaks, but no changelog. Time to give our old RH 6.2 machines one last kernel-recompile before Red Hat's end-of-life date arrives for 6.2? :-) What I'd like to know is - who else (besides me) out there still has machines running 2.2 and intends to keep it that way?"

Comments

Kernel Series 2.2

[Scoria]

Although Linux 2.2 may eventually become relatively obscure, I wouldn't anticipate its disappearance. It will almost certainly remain a viable contender for certain embedded and esoteric applications.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it stable enough for prime-time yet? I'm not "upgrading" my 2.0 boxes until I'm sure it is.

Did anyone ever fix the uptime rollover thing? That's what I'm really waiting for. I'm sick of rebooting every year and a half.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

It will almost certainly remain a viable contender for certain embedded and esoteric applications.

Why? I'd really like to hear why you think that. You offer no "why" in your post. This is not a flame or anything, I'm just VERY curious why you think this.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Micah]

Huh? 2.0 is ready for prime time? Why didn't someone tell me? I'm still using 1.2!

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Anonymous Coward]

'Cause.

And stuff.

So yeah, basically.

'Nuff said.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what was available when I threw out NT4. I didn't like the "SCO way or no way" snd FreeBSD-2.2.2 was pretty sucky. Slackware something in a Sam's Slackware Unleashed" book worked, and it's been running nameservers ever since (with the requisite yearly reboots).

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Equinox]

Scoria...Linux is not a food...

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Anonymous Coward]

The subscription model has seriously fucked up the moderation and First Posting. It is _worse_ than it was before.

I offer the +5 parent as evidence. Such a vague peice of shit should not be +5, and everyone but michael knows it.

I block slashdot banner ads, and I will never subscribe.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Scoria]

What have I been eating, then?

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[0x0d0a]

This newfangled Linux thing seems a bit risky. Minix is definitely the way to go.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Anonymous Coward]

i fixed that for you with a -1 overrated.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[rmadmin]

I'm still running a 2.0 kernel on a production Slackware 2.3 machine. The reason for that is that I'm afriad of breaking the antique software package on the system by upgrading, but it seems I will have to do something soon since OpenSSH will no longer compile on the machine, and I don't feel like leaving it open to the world.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all this follow-the-leader moderation. Too lazy to think and read for themselves.

I also notice that it is only +4 now. It seems that a reply with an incitment to moderate parent is usually followed blindly -sigh-.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[dfries]

I'm running 2.4.18 on my Telephone so I'm not so sure how long 2.2 will last in the embedded market either.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Anonymous Coward]

I ran a 2.4 kernel on a box that was largely unchanged from its original Slackware 3.2 install from November 1997. There were a few minor changes along the way to keep up with the kernel, but nothing massive.

Last year, I upgraded it in place to Slackware 8.1 by methodically installing new packages. Those old versions didn't have upgradepkg, so you have to install a few things (like pkgtools) before you do anything else.

After finishing with that and running the new version of LILO to set up the boot environment, I rebooted. It came back up, and life goes on with a modern box that isn't limited by libc5 weirdness.

You can do it. Just be slow and methodical and remember to install the new base before removing anything from the old one. That means installing all of the new libs (glibc, etc) before even thinking about touching the old packages.

By the way, I did all of this in multi-user mode since I was coming in via ssh. It worked fine.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Azar]

"I ran a 2.4 kernel on a box that was largely unchanged from its original Slackware 3.2 install from November 1997."

Wow that's AMAZING! You were able to run a kernel FOUR YEARS BEFORE IT WAS INVENTED?! Dude, what's your secret?

I think you meant a 2.0 series kernel (since 2.2 didn't even come about until 1999). Such a small typo, and yet, such a big one.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Nerull]

Actually, I think you need to read that a little more carefully. He is saying that he ran a 2.4 kernel on a 'Slackware 3.2 box largely unchanged from its original November 1997 install.'

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[CameronGary]

Dude, read more carefully. He's not saying that he ran a 2.4 kernel in 1997. He's saying that he ran a 2.4 kernel on machine that, otherwise, hadn't changed much since 1997. The author could have made that more clear, but it's there. If you consider the grand-parent post as context, it makes sense.

Slashdot - an Internet reading comprehension test - unfortunately most people fail!

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[MonMotha]

Linux 2.4 runs on my phone, my ipaq, my TV set-top box...

It also runs on tons of other things you wouldn't think it could possibly run on. uClinux (Linux for procs without MMUs) is even working with 2.5 now (in fact, I do believe it's merged into the vanilla 2.5 source tree).

The only reason I use 2.2 kernels anymore is when I need size. I can't get a very functional 2.4 kernel below about 500k, I can get 2.2 kernels down to about 400k easily, and I could probably make them smaller yet. Then again, I could always go get a copy of 2.0.39 :)

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Fembot]

My mail server still runs 2.2.x (I forget what x is now) mostly because I set it all up years ago, and appart from the odd security patch it just goes without me touching it for months on end.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Chatterton]

Well "Why ?", simply I think because the 2.4 Kernel is bigger than the 2.2 and for embedded applications, space is money... Just for a test, try to find some ONE 1.44M disk firewall distro with a 2.4 kernel... And do the same research with a 2.2... Why?

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you nailed it. In retrospect I shouldn't have tagged two "from ..." parts into that sentence, since it made things confusing.

Besides, I now realize that I confused the dates. It was actually installed in _June_ 1997 as Slackware 3.2. The November date was my brain getting that install mixed up with the previous one on that hardware - Slackware 2.0 in November 1994!

In case anyone cares, the box in question was built around a brain-damaged IBM 486SLC2-66, and had an uptime of 388 days when it was shut down for the aforementioned upgrade. It had run Linux 1.3.1 from May 31, 1996 to June 24, 1997.

Now a public service announcement: don't do this. I was young and stupid. On today's Internet, someone will find your box and will exploit (ahem) it to the utmost. Don't be an uptime lemming - keep those boxes patched, even if it means the occasional reboot.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I can easily use 2.4.20 for enbedded uses. and it is NO BIGGER.

that's the funny thing about the linux kernel, you cimpile out of it what you dont need... very unlike windows where it's forced down your throat.

I can make a slackware 9.0 system run on a 486 very well... do THAT with XP.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Anonymous Coward]

The machine I'm typing this on has an actual uptime of 592 days. It rolled over on December 6th from 497 to 0 with no harm to any of the OS or applications. Uptime now shows "95" days.

Running Slackware 7.1 with kernel 2.2.18.

Hardware is a (diskless) Netpliance I-Opener.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[gujo-odori]

2.2 is still quite viable for use on production servers. At my former employer, the mail system (4 MXes, 2 outbound SMTP boxes, 2 POP proxies, and 2 backend mail spools) still runs 2.2 because it has been utterly stable (2.4 is pretty stable now too, but for a long time 2.4 was held to be too volatile for production use by many people, and more than a few still think so).

The default kernel remains 2.2 in Debian Stable, as well. On my personal machine I run 2.4, but if I were installing to a server that had no need for USB, etc., I would think about using 2.2 even now.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[j-pimp]

Where can I purchase this telephone? And let me stamp out the trolls by saying: Image playing quake on a beowulf of these while calling Natalie Portman up and asking her if you can pour grits on her.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[NighthawkFoo]

Justman in da house! :-)

I wonder what a beowulf cluster of Keplers would look like?

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[edbarrett]

LEAF Bering. It rocks. seriously. Shoreline firewall config, Free S/WAN support, and more!

I'm not trying to knock you, I'm just plugging a cool product (although I'm just a user, myself).

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[n9hmg]

I'd think moderators would turn off display of score and moderation, and read at -1. That'd be good slashcode - force my settings when you have moderation points. On the other hand, staying at -1 all the time keeps me up-to-date on the evolution of the "in soviet russia" thing.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[shoodhave]

Been running my little 6.2 box and only rebooted when I installed the new kernel. Been running for about 3.5 years. Think I might have lost power a couple of times though :(

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[PONA-Boy]

*ahem*

SLACKWARE distros have NO package management tools!!!

*ahem*

Oh really? I never HEARD of that before!!

-PONA-

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[stfvon007]

I got a machine running 2.0 still. Had a tiny hard drive so I needed to fit everything in 330 MB

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Brent_Litzer]

Everything seems to be +5 now. Makes it very hard to find posts worth reading. I find myself being very bored with Slashdot all of a sudden. It went from a expertly moderated forum to a average unmoderated forum overnight.

The brilliance of Slashdot is(was?) in the moderation - I hope it's not gone.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

SLACKWARE distros have NO package management tools!!!

Slackware has two. tar and gzip.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[PONA-Boy]

Most astute...my point eggsactly.

make mine SLACKWARE!

-PONA-

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny you mention this because I know some folks that are still running 2.0 on a number of their primary systems. They're still running Sendmail 8.9.3 and Bind 4.9.7. Yeah, that a a little behind. So let us review. That's a 1998/05/11 release date for Bind and a 1999/02/04 release date for Sendmail. So they're using a copy of bind that's almost (2 months under) 5 years old. And the copy of Sendmail they're using is about a month over 4 years old. Nice. They aren't practicing security through obscrutiny. They're practicing security through obsolesence. Next week I hear they're upgrading to Windows95 in their test lab.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[mystran]

It at least used to include (out of the box) rpm2tgz tool, which will convert rpm's to tar.gz, which was very useful back when you didn't have the broadband to download tens of MB of source, and didn't want to wait hours for large compiles, but many magazine's only had rpm's (sometimes source-rpm's as well) on the CD included. Most of that stuff could be made to work on Slackware without any problems.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[jo42]

There is also diff and cp...

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

There is also diff and cp...

We're getting dangerously close to calling autoconf and make package tools!

;-)

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[dfries]

Where can I purchase this telephone?

That's odd, I thought for sure I included the link, O-well, TuxScreen, but sorry they are all out according to the web page, Sold Out, your best bet it to look around for someone who wants to sell them. I have two, but I'm not looking to sell them.

There are other Linux based phones out. One of them is SNOM. It is a VoIP phone as opposed to the TuxScreen which plugs in to the standard telephone jack. The TuxScreen has a 640x480 color screen while the SNOM has a tiny LCD window. One of my friends found the SNOM phone while browsing the web and I don't know anything more than what the web page says.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[bluGill]

When I decided that my slackware 3.0 server was getting too many attempts on ftp I disabled ftp on that machine. After some thought I put the entire machine behind a nat firewall. When I want to log on remotely (it is headless so local login is impossible) I need to first log into a secured (somewhat) freeBSD machine, and then telnet.

Someday I'm going to retire that machine, but don't be surprized to read in a few years that I've got it has a uptime record (or rollover, not sure if that is fixed or not) if I break down and buy a UPS.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[j-pimp]

So I take it you heard the big old hunk of junk once known as kepler resides in my garage. I'm looking for an ethernet jack and a 220 outlet for it.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Wolfrider]

--Try browsing at 3, about 1 day after the article gets posted.

--Not very "bleeding-edge current", but good for weeding out the chaff.

Re:Kernel Series 2.2

[Anonymous Coward]

330MB is small these days?

I shoehorned a busybox + sshd + Linux 2.2.20 system on the 4MB flash IDE drive on my NIC (New Internet Computer). With room to spare.

archeology

[loveandpeace]

i have thought of giving my 386 running 6.x to my four-year-old (and letting him have my 2400b modem to connect to the net). i have a 200mHz running mandrake 7. but i really like my friend's 233 running Red Hat 8. it's so simple, even my mother could use it.

Re:archeology

[Anonymous Coward]

it's so simple, even my mother could use it.

And your mother is so simple even your father could use her.

Re:archeology

[Anonymous Coward]

A 233 running RedHat 8?! What are you, a masochist?

Re:archeology

[rsax]

My main box is a typewriter. I have it connected to my friend's typewriter in another apartment with a copper wire and we just type 1's and 0's back and forth. I think I might upgrade sometime soon.

Re:archeology

[Beat me loud]

Sorry, I just can't help myself. 200 millihertz? Wow, I think the 2400 baud modem may outrun your computer. If you turn on the Turbo switch, you may get another 6 years outa that thing.

Re:archeology

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet! Tell me how you like it.
I've been thinking of upgrading to a typewriter soon.

Right now I'm still using pen and paper to connect to the internet. I use a string plugged into the telephone outlet to log on. Ping times are poor, but overall I say that my pen and paper rig is one of the higher end models available, but man that typewriter stuff looks so promising. I bet one day those typewriters might even have a TV screen type device connected to them allowing us to do more.

Re:archeology

[WestieDog]

Sounds like a good punishment to me :).

Re:archeology

[silvercloak]

The 233 runs RH8 well. It does have 256MB of ram, a decent 3D AGP video card, and an ATA-133 hard drive though. These do make for wider bottle necks.

I am not playing with the latest eye candy, but who needs eye candy to browse the web, read email, admin a web/email server (also a 233 running RH7.3 :) over ssh, and listen to the BBC via RealAudio.

Re:archeology

[bigchris]

Actually, my crowning acheivement was running a 2.2.19 linux install running as a:

* dial-up gateway (thus ran the firewall)
* dhcp server
* cacheing DNS server

I ran a Pentium 166 with 16MB RAM. Never skipped a beat. That is until I attempted to upgrade it to RedHat 7.2 and literally smoked it.

Re:archeology

[loveandpeace]

it seems to handle a number of games as well, though of course we're not into things like Quake around here. Chess rox.

Why 2.2?

[York the Mysterious]

This is a real question not flame bait. Why would you keep 2.2? What is there in 2.4 that makes it so bad? It seems like it's pretty mature now so what's wrong with it?

-Tim

Re:Why 2.2?

[appleprophet]

Backwards compatibility.

Re:Why 2.2?

[baomike]

because slackware 8.1 will not install on the drive in my 486 firewall. Slackware 7.0 handles most everything just fine.
I may have to replace ipchains but that ain't 2.2.

As to why change ...
You change when the software you need, needs the new version to run or the installation on the old is so much bother updateing that the new is worth it.

Re:Why 2.2?

[Osty]

This is a real question not flame bait. Why would you keep 2.2? What is there in 2.4 that makes it so bad? It seems like it's pretty mature now so what's wrong with it?

Better yet, why would you upgrade if 2.2 does everything you need? Any security patches will be back-ported, and that's the only time you really need to upgrade your kernel so long as it does everything you need already. For example, my bridge/firewall machine (P200MMX) is running a 2.2 kernel, and with the 2.4 bridging code backport, it works perfectly fine. I have absolutely no desire to spend a day with my firewall machine down while I upgrade all of the kernel dependencies, configure and build a 2.4 kernel, rewrite my firewall scripts for iptables (yeah, I know you can use the old ipchains interface with 2.4, but if you're going to do the upgrade, do the upgrade), and then work out all the gremlins from running "new" code.

Desktops are different, because nobody cares if you have downtime with them. Servers on the other hand can cause pain when they're down, and even for a personal server the downtime is not worth the upgrade. You gain nothing, and lose quite a bit of time.

Eventually, I'll decomission the P200 and bring the celeryonion 433 up as my bridge/firewall machine, but that's going to be timed with a move (when the machines will have to be down anyway, and it'll be a week or two before the new place has internet access). Doing it before then is pointless.

Re:Why 2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had to bet my life on it I'd still use 2.2 over 2.4. To say the 2.4 series has had some rough spots is an understatment. 2.4.0 through something like 2.4.5 was less then impressive and at 2.4.10 Linux replaced the VM. It hasn't exactly been smooth sailing. I suppose by 2.4.24 I'll have that same warm feeling I do for 2.2 but so far that hasn't happened.

Re:Why 2.2?

[the eric conspiracy]

Why would you keep 2.2?

'cause upgrading a server running a bunch of stuff would take a long time to test.

Re:Why 2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also I forgot to mention basic things like DMA still don't work correctly all the time yet. And ACPI is still a ways off from working. That's been my biggest disapointment with 2.4 so far. The things that are necessary for modern computing aren't stable yet and it doesn't look like that's going to be fixed anytime soon.

Re:Why 2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

just curious, is it because of the size limits or the drive will not work at all? i was trying to install a distro with a 2.4 kernell and i had to give it the ide=nodma option on my old P150 laptop to get past hardware detection.
-a. coward

Re:Why 2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you keep 2.2?

When was the last time you upgraded your VCR? DVD-Player? Microwave oven? How about your automobile? Washing machine? Refrigerator?

What is the upgrade cycle for these devices?

Torsten

Re:Why 2.2?

[Xformer]

Agreed. Both my firewall and main server are running 2.2.x, it works well enough, so I don't plan to upgrade any time soon.

Re:Why 2.2?

[gomoX]

because it was easier to me to install the vanilla kernel on debian woody in a P166-mmx with tons of ISA stuff and if im using fluxbox instead of kde, i dont need any kernel sources nor packages wasting space on my hd. I will just apt-get everything: if it works, why change it?

Re:Why 2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

And what you see here can all be summarized in a very simple reply - yes people are keeping 2.2, but linux is simply such a pain in the ass to try to upgrade - too many things break and need to be fixed.

One place Windows still has linux beaten (unfortunately) is ease of use for the computer layman.

Re:Why 2.2?

[Osty]

When was the last time you upgraded your VCR? DVD-Player? Microwave oven? How about your automobile? Washing machine? Refrigerator?

VCR? People still use VCRs? As for the rest:

• DVD Player: I upgraded last year. Got ~7 months out of my old Sony DVD player before I decided I needed more (progressive scan), so I upgraded to a Panasonic. Gave the Sony to my parents, since it was still an awesome player (sans progscan). As far as I know, they're still using it (though they too upgraded to an HDTV since then, so they may have upgraded their DVD player).
• Appliances: Hrm. Doing that next month. But I guess that goes along with buying a house.
• Car: Did that last year, too. I got a little over two years out of my Monte Carlo before I decided I needed more, so I bought a Porsche.

I understand your point, just trying to show that you'd be surprised at how often people upgrade the kind of things you're talking about. However, now that I have a good set of stuff (DVD player, car, appliances), I don't see me upgrading for a few years at least. I'll probably just work on upgrading my home theater system instead.

Re:Why 2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

How often are you upgrading your windows kernel?

Re:Why 2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why would you keep 2.2?

% uptime
9:19pm up 470 days, 12:17, 1 user, load average: 9.33, 4.13, 4.07

% cat /proc/version

Linux version 2.2.16-3 (root@porky.devel.redhat.com)

That's why. It handles about 5 million hits per day on weekdays. Each hit runs a PHP program and has several database accesses. If it works so well, why change?

> What is there in 2.4 that makes it so bad?

On the 45 servers we have, I have never once gotten 2.4 or 2.5 to boot. Either the video doesn't work or it locks-up after printing "Loading Linux..." I'd like to upgrade to 2.4 so I could use our gigabyte Ethernet cards, but if 2.4 won't boot, what good is it?

2.4 is also harder to get to fit in standard boot images. Most of our servers won't boot bzImages. Linus has threatened several times to remove support for normal images. If he does that, we'll either have to stick with old kernels indefinitely or buy Sun's.

Re:Why 2.2?

[oconnorcjo]

This is a real question not flame bait. Why would you keep 2.2? What is there in 2.4 that makes it so bad? It seems like it's pretty mature now so what's wrong with it?

Another good question is why upgrade?

2.2 is a good system and has served many of us well. Linux 2.4 really only became stable and available in 2002. For people who don't live on the bleeding edge (and there is a reason it is called "bleeding"), 2.4 is just starting to be deployed. When a server runs well, upgrading it is often just a pain. I am guessing that 2.6 will come out in 2004, be stable and available in 2005 and many servers will only start migrating to it in 2006 and on slashdot some simmiliar story will be posted and somebody (maybe you) will post a simmiliar comment/question.

Re:Why 2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! EVERYONE! Look at me! I'm RICH! RICH I TELLS YA!

Re:Why 2.2?

[Tony-A]

Box du jour syndrome. Due to peculiarities in the particular hardware and bios and in the particular detection of that hardware, things work or not with no easily discernable rhyme or reason. At one point I had two versions of RedHat and two computers. One version would install on one computer and not the other. The other version would install on the other computer but not the first.
One advantage of old versions is that you can get something usable running without much effort or knowledge.

Re:Why 2.2?

[Kourino]

I am guessing that 2.6 will come out in 2004, be stable and available in 2005 and many servers will only start migrating to it in 2006 ...

Theory has it that 2.6 will come out around the end of June 2003. Well, this is theory, of course, but there aren't really many show-stoppers left in 2.5 nowadays. I think "by the end of the year" might be a reasonable release expectation for 2.6.0 barring major problems cropping up in the next couple of months. If this is the case, I bet it would be stable enough to use in production by mid-2004.

Further, people running big machines (by "big" I mean "NR_CPUS >= 4") will probably want to upgrade; Linux scalability just keeps getting better with people like Bill Irwin and Martin Bligh hacking away ...

Re:Why 2.2?

[Tuxinatorium]

For example, my bridge/firewall machine (P200MMX) is running a 2.2 kernel, and with the 2.4 bridging code backport, it works perfectly fine. I have absolutely no desire to spend a day with my firewall machine down while I upgrade all of the kernel dependencies, configure and build a 2.4 kernel, rewrite my firewall scripts for iptables (yeah, I know you can use the old ipchains interface with 2.4, but if you're going to do the upgrade, do the upgrade), and then work out all the gremlins from running "new" code. Incidentally, that is exactly the reason most people don't want to bother trying linux. You have to manually mess with so many things that ought to be handled automatically by the installer. Now if I were an android with tons of spare time on my hands, I wouldn't mind...

Re:Why 2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you keep 2.2?

Try running H.323 apps behind a masqueraded machine under 2.4.

Re:Why 2.2?

[spinkham]

Say what? You want an automatic setup of a firewall, which are custom by design?
Or are you talking about the software upgrades, which debian dselect or the gentoo or source mage ports systems handle with darn easy interfaces?
The setup and upkeep of a good linux distro. is as easy as possible, no easier. Firewall boxen like this aren't the normal thing your grandmother runs.

Re:Why 2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a rich uncle who makes 100x more than me, and even he does not "upgrade" his shit until he has to (when he does I just stand there all slack jawed and jealous).

This consumer upgrade cycle may be good for the economy, but from an individual point of view, it is economic suicide.

Re:Why 2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, one good reason is if you are using your last 386 as a home router / server. The ancient Linux Router Project is still up on the web, for those who want to use a 386 in this manner. There was even a Slashdot article on this last year, though for the life of me I cannot find the article in order to link to it. I'll keep trying, but wouldn't mind a gentle reminder if someone else knows...

Blacklisted

Re:Why 2.2?

[Cirvam]

Hey, check out RennList for an active community of Porsche owners.

To be on topic, some stuff (kernel mods) are specificly written for that kernel version, and you don't have the resources to upgrade to newer hardware (or perhaps there isn't newer hardware).

Re:Why 2.2?

[palfreman]

I had some horrible experiences with 2.4 around about 2.4.3, then I got really put off by performace problems with 2.4.6. Then there was the new VM in 2.4.10 and disaster with 2.4.11 and 2.4.13.

At that point I switched to FreeBSD 4.x, and I must say, I've never looked back. I find FreeBSD 4.x superb on servers (max 2 cpu, but who ever uses more than that?) and great on my low spec desktop. I now only have one Linux machine left, and that is my parents firewall running Linux 2.2.20 on a partially updated Redhat 6.2 setup.

My next decision is whether to try and update their present system (which is why I'm reading everything here at -1 nested) or just to wait for FreBSD 4.8 to come out and use that on it instead. Currently, unless 2.2.24 in a very important update, I think FreeBSD will be the way I'll go, simply because it is so much easier to upgrade (with make update for cvsup, make buildworld etc. etc, and portupgrade, plus the superb ports tree).

I'm still following 2.2.x though,even though I've mostly crossed over. And I am assured Linux makes a more responsive desktop. I suppose what really makes me use FreeBSD is two things, the bloatedness of Redhat and the political aganda of Debian. Having that against Debain may be unfair, but FreeBSD does just completely lack that and have a much faster release schedule.

Re:Why 2.2?

[Blkdeath]

Incidentally, that is exactly the reason most people don't want to bother trying linux. You have to manually mess with so many things that ought to be handled automatically by the installer. Now if I were an android with tons of spare time on my hands, I wouldn't mind...

emerge rsync
emerge world -u

Is there a step I've missed here? I agree, it does seem like a lot of work. Oh, and if I had to update several boxes, I'd be forced to add "b" and "k" to the "-u" sequence and put the packages on an NFS server.

Man, this Linux stuff is hard.

Re:Why 2.2?

[palfreman]

That's interesting, but I don't understand why your servers won't boot non-bzImages or any 2.4/2.5 kernels. Even before I switched to FreBSD for everything (because of a new employer), I was installing early 2.4 kernels without problem - reliabilty was an issue back then, but not instaling. I did have to use vmlinux on sun hardaware, but that is what you are supposed to do, right? After all, why _use_ bz compression for a kernel not stuck with Intel size restrictions?

Re:Why 2.2?

[oconnorcjo]

Theory has it that 2.6 will come out around the end of June 2003. Well, this is theory, of course, but there aren't really many show-stoppers left in 2.5 nowadays. I think "by the end of the year" might be a reasonable release expectation for 2.6.0 barring major problems cropping up in the next couple of months. If this is the case, I bet it would be stable enough to use in production by mid-2004.

Developers of software always think they are close but usually software gets delayed much longer than expected. "Linus and gang" wanted the 2.5 series to be done in something like 9 months. When I was reading that, I thought the idea was rediculous. 2.5 was started 11/2001 and it is now 3/2003. A two year development cycle is really as fast as can be expected in such a sophisticated system (if fundamental changes are made) and a three year cycle (like the time given to 2.4) is probably even better. Nobody really needs a new kernel sooner (or they are using the wrong tool for the job) and the time could be used to make the new system better. Distibutions, developers and users should spend more time USING an OS than UPGRADING it. I would be shocked if Linus was actually able to release 2.6 this year and servers should not start deploying it for another year after that.

Re:Why 2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, check out RennList [rennlist.com] for an active community of Tiny Penises

Re:Why 2.2?

[MSTCrow5429]

He might not be rich. He could just be an overspender. It's hard to tell, as most rich people aren't very extravagent.

Re:Why 2.2?

[non-poster]

I had some horrible experiences with 2.4 around about 2.4.3, then I got really put off by performace problems with 2.4.6. Then there was the new VM in 2.4.10 and disaster with 2.4.11 and 2.4.13.

Okay, so you had some problems with it. All software has problems. But, 2.4.13 was released on October 24, 2001. That a year and a half ago. I think they've worked out the bugs since then...

I suppose what really makes me use FreeBSD is two things, the bloatedness of Redhat and the political aganda of Debian.

There are Linux distributions other than those two. Surely you're not generalizing everything related to Linux by your experience with kernels from a year and a half ago, and a limited choice of distributions (also probably from that same time).

Re:Why 2.2?

[Osty]

He might not be rich. He could just be an overspender. It's hard to tell, as most rich people aren't very extravagent.

I wouldn't say "overspender" so much as "still young an amassing the things necessary for a comfortable life". My current DVD player will at least last me until I upgrade my current TV, and I doubt I'll be doing that within 5 years at least. The appliances part goes along with buying a house, which is considered a wise investment rather than overspending (unless of course you over-reached on what you can afford, which I certainly didn't). Sure, the car is a little extravagant, but dammit I'm young, I can afford it, and I deserve to have a little fun. And I'll still have that car in 10 years.

If/when I get married and have to deal with spousal control, it's highly unlikely I'll be allowed to make these kinds of purchases any more. Therefore, I'm getting it out of my system while I can, and when I have to "settle down" later in life, I'll already have the things I want.

Re:Why 2.2?

[Osty]

which debian dselect or the gentoo or source mage ports systems handle with darn easy interfaces?

Which would be great, except my firewall system has been around longer than two out of the three things you listed. And back then, debian was a bit of a mess as well. If I were to do it all over again, I would install debian or similar and have an easy upgrade route (though once you start customizing stuff, upgrades aren't so easy -- an upgrade could easily blow away or break customizations you've made, and therefore you need to be more careful). However, hindsight is always 20/20. The system I have now runs and runs well, and the kernel and packages are sufficiently new to avoid currently-known security problems. I've got a shitload of other stuff to do, and can't be bothered with taking down my personal firewall machine for a day/weekend to rebuild it to be "better". If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Firewall boxen like this aren't the normal thing your grandmother runs.

My grandmother doesn't even use a computer, let alone Linux. However, that's not the point. The question was, why would you stay with a 2.2 kernel, and my answer was a perfectly valid reason why. There are reasons to not stay with a 2.2 kernel as well, but sometimes (often) the reasons to stay outweigh the reasons to upgrade.

Re:Why 2.2?

[Jayanef]

I'm still using 2.2, especially for my BGP router
$ uptime
2:02pm up 408 days, 10:37, 1 user, load average: 0.03, 0.05, 0.02

Re:Why 2.2?

[MonMotha]

I know there is an h.323 conntrack module in the patch-o-matic, and I have various sources indicate that it does indeed work, at least for MS Netmeeting. There's also the option to use a h.323 proxy.

If you really want to do networking with your Linux box (I do it every day), 2.4 is superior in most ways. ipchains sucks compared to the Netfilter (iptables). The NAT is vastly improved, you can match based on just about any criteria (if the stateful matching isn't enough, you can also match randomly :), and the mangle table is also useful, especially when combined with traffic control. Oh, did I mention the whole host of traffic control facilities?

That's not to say there's no reason to stick with 2.2. I have yet to see a MS DirectPlay NAT helper module on 2.4. Also, 2.2 has been pretty well proven stable over the course of time. It's no longer a moving target, and it doesn't die. However, there's also a lot of compelling reasons to migrate to 2.4.

Re:Why 2.2?

[Chatterton]

Another point on this. I have a scrip to build my special kernel to fit in one 1.44 disk for my firewall (P75 with 16MB without HD and fans). It was a pain in the ass to make all change in the kernel and all the needed packages to compile them against libc. I would love to use 2.4 for is iptables and especialy the QOS. But it is too much assle for me and I don't find this kind of 1 disk distro with the 2.4 (too big ???).

Re:Why 2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once every 2nd/3rd year. 95-98-2k-XP- ...

Re:Why 2.2?

[Thnurg]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If you've got 2.2 running just fine, then upgrading should only occur if you either need 2.4 features, or see a bug fixed that affects you.
I recently upgraded a server to 2.4, but only because I had to. I wanted to add file server capabilities, and my data disk (40GB) was reiserfs formatted, and none of the 2.2 reiserfs patches would work, so I went up to 2.4.
I still have not managed to upgrade from ipchains to iptables though, since ipchains just works (at least according to my logs, and services such as Steve Gibson's).

Re:Why 2.2?

[MrBlue VT]

Those automatic installers have a bad tendency to blast right over any custom configuration or custom installations of programs. The worst is when the package manager decides to put the config file in one place, while the "make install" for the program puts it elsewhere. Then you've got two copies of the thing floating around and it quickly turns into a huge hassle.

Before you ask why don't I only install things when a binary package is put out, the answer is I'd rather not wait for that, and I'd rather have complete control over what happens with the installation.

Re:Why 2.2?

[kauttapiste]

I have absolutely no desire to spend a day with my firewall machine down while I upgrade all of the kernel dependencies, configure and build a 2.4 kernel, rewrite my firewall scripts for iptables

Man, what are you? A cold fish? Who wouldn't have such desires? I think you should get a life soon.. :-)

Re:Why 2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing is 'wrong' with 2.4 per se, but if 2.2
isn't broken, there's no need to fix it.
Also, some people are very familiar with 2.2 and
don't feel like learning new tricks.

Re:Why 2.2?

[TooLazyToLogon]

RH 6.2 is the last version that I could get samba to work. I don't know what they did to break it but I can't use anything newer until I figure it out.

Re:Why 2.2?

[spinkham]

Which is why I did not reply to you, but to a person replying to you.
He was not saying that you in particular shouldn't upgrade, but that, in effect, "Linux sux0rs".
He said,"Incidentally, that is exactly the reason most people don't want to bother trying linux. You have to manually mess with so many things that ought to be handled automatically by the installer. Now if I were an android with tons of spare time on my hands, I wouldn't mind..."
I agree with you, disagree with him. If you don't have any compelling reason to upgrade, don't. But your not wanting to upgrade your custom firewall setup doesn't mean in general that Linux is broken, which is what the person I replied to said.

Re:Why 2.2?

[Blkdeath]

Those automatic installers have a bad tendency to blast right over any custom configuration or custom installations of programs. The worst is when the package manager decides to put the config file in one place, while the "make install" for the program puts it elsewhere. Then you've got two copies of the thing floating around and it quickly turns into a huge hassle.

I see you've never looked at Gentoo before.

The short answer is; you have nothing to worry about. Portage does it right.

Before you ask why don't I only install things when a binary package is put out, the answer is I'd rather not wait for that, and I'd rather have complete control over what happens with the installation.

I have exactly that control with Gentoo. Might want to give it a whirl.

Re:Why 2.2?

[k12linux]

Why would you keep 2.2?

In our case, because RedHat v6.2 is the ONLY Linux OS our software vendor supports (for a key software package we rely on.) Changing software really isn't an option.

Going without support really isn't either. It's hard enough to get them to admit that any problem we have is with their software. Throw in an unsupported OS and you can be sure that it will almost always be the "cause" of the problem when something goes wrong.

Last I heard they were planning to start supporting RedHat advanced server sometime near the end of the year. So it looks like we'll probably be on 2.2 until nearly 2004.

Several production servers

[benevold]

Although we are slowly phasing them out we are running quite a few machines, mostly redhat. Because of they are critical systems they have yet to be upgraded. There's one debian box that's been up for over 500 days and the kernel wasn't upgraded for a while before that! For some reason it seems to be the most stable box we have.

Re:Several production servers

[gilesjuk]

Debian use tried and tested software, their kernel sources contain quite a few bugfixes too.

Running the vanilla sources from www.kernel.org means you sometimes miss out on some bugfixes, unless you follow kernel development.

Re:Several production servers

[gilesjuk]

"Package: kernel-source-2.4.20 2.4.20-5
This package provides the source code for the Linux kernel version 2.4.20 with modifications by Debian"

Vanilla with strawberry topping I think :)

Why?

[este]

I get asked all the time.

I've still got 2.2 on my laptop, and really, I'm happy. I don't use it for much more than mobile internet access, and as tightly compiled as I have it, I don't feel a need to go through and upgrade. Just that much more work for an overall unimportant change, a least in this situation.

Of course, my desktop has 2.4. :-)

Re:Why?

[bergeron76]

Uhm, I'm not sure how old your laptop is, but 2.4 has some MAJOR enhancements suited for portables - most notably APM/ACPI power features.

Also, one of the great new features of the 2.5 development tree (soon to be 2.6 [or 3.0]) kernel is ACPI suspend-to-disk/hibernate. I'm ueber excited about this feature!

Anyway, back to the point. New kernels to tend to add new features to the core; however, unless I'm mistaken, most of the unwanted features don't get "built" into the kernel if they're not optioned. As such, your kernel size still remains reasonable, and you effectively just end up with more "options" with newer kernels.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Also, one of the great new features of the 2.5 development tree (soon to be 2.6 [or 3.0]) kernel is ACPI suspend-to-disk/hibernate. I'm ueber excited about this feature!"

Ya I was too when XP and ME came out in the Windows OS family. Hope it works out well for you.

Still ticking

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got 8 machines still running 2.2 at the moment. They're standalone boxes used for Fortran code... so, there's No Compelling Reason yet for an upgrade.

PS2 Linux users

[Vardamir]

All of us are still using 2.2 kernels, whether we like it or not.

Re:PS2 Linux users

[Mattsson]

Take a look at http://blackrhino.xrhino.com/
A debian-like 2.4 distribution for ps2. Requires the ps2linux kit though...

Re:PS2 Linux users

[Synic]

Runing any Linux on PS2 requires the ps2linux kit!

Re:PS2 Linux users

[Kalak]

ps2 as in IBM ps2 or Playstation 2?

Re:PS2 Linux users

[y0bhgu0d]

glad to know i'm not the only one who was confused by that comment *whew*

i like the dreamcast better anyway?

Re:PS2 Linux users

[LinuxOnHal]

PS2 as in Sony Playstation 2.

Re:PS2 Linux users

[Blkdeath]

ps2 as in IBM ps2 or Playstation 2?

IBM made a line of machines called the "PS/2", or "Personal System 2" (as I recall). Sony made the "PS2" or "PlayStation 2".

Re:PS2 Linux users

[CronoCloud]

Yep. At least the xrhino 2.2.21 kernel has more USB support. I've been thinking about BlackRhino but I'll have to repartition and I don't think BlackRhino's X works yet.

Re:PS2 Linux users

[gingertwit]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't think 2.4 had been ported to the PS2 yet. I've got Blackrhino on my PS2 but only with the xrhino 2.2.21-xr7 kernel.

Fancy new software for my old POS?

[Quasar1999]

2.2? I'm still running 2.1... Works great (as a firewall)... then again, it's only a 486 DX2 66... so I don't dare fiddle with it... It might turn to dust from old age...

Re:Fancy new software for my old POS?

[AlanS2002]

Dude why are you running a development kernel on a firewall?

Re:Fancy new software for my old POS?

[Kevin Stevens]

man... cant you find something more recent than that? in my closet I have a bunch of old p133's just laying around... I guess if youre network is small, a 486 is ok... but that seems a little extreme.

Re:Fancy new software for my old POS?

[FyRE666]

Bah! A 486 can easily handle a moderate (small office) amount of machines on a cable connection. We had one at a previous job (486dx33, 16MB RAM, no hard disk) that MASQ'ed/firewalled for 15 machines - it didn't break a sweat. I have an old P90/32MB on my DSL line (internal ADSL modem) with extensive firewall rules, acts as the smart mail relay and it also runs apache when the main server is down (minimal config - no CGI/PHP). It's never anything close to busy. Mind you, I think it's close to death now - it normally takes 3 attempts to boot, and I can hear the fan if I listen closely even though its up in my attic! I'll really have to back up the drive one day - took me about a week to get it working just right - that ASDL card was a real bitch...

Re:Fancy new software for my old POS?

[belloc]

Yep. I've even got a 486 with 32 MB RAM serving up email to over 200 users. About a third of them use pine via SSH sessions, the rest IMAP in via webmail (the httpd side is running on a different server, of course, but it connects to this little box with IMAP connections generated with PHP scripts). None of the users are technical enough to do anything else with their accounts. They all have shells accessible via SSH, but if anyone has run any command besides pine, passwd, or quota, I'd be surprised.

It's been in use for about five years now. I never intended it to serve so many users...in fact it was first installed as a proof-of-concept machine. But the concept took hold, and it's been sailing along ever since. Only three reboots in those five years, and those because of extended (and planned) power outages. It was even moved from one building to another during one of those outages.

It's up to Debian Potato (2.2) now, and that's prolly where it will stay until the hardware hits the wall. The hardware is an old IBM PS/2 desktop machine, so it's been very stable all these years.

Belloc

What about 2.0?

[kingsqueak]

I'm sure there are plenty of people with boxes up running 2.0 still too or there wouldn't be continued effort on it.

Re:What about 2.0?

[Tribbin]

My Freesco machine does 2.0.38 for years, I see no need to upgrade the kernel/software.

debian

[Anonymous Coward]

if i am not mistaken, i believe the current version of debian still defaults to 2.2.somethingobscure unless you specify the bf24 image during install (just did it today actually)

I know people who still have routers

[leviramsey]

...that run 2.0... And of course, Debian stable is still 2.2.

Re:I know people who still have routers

[The_Red_Bull]

My 486 laptop runs 2.0.36 with olde slink Debian.

Works a treat...
...as a portable lart.

Re:I know people who still have routers

[ocelotbob]

Not entirely true. Stable has 2.4.18. By default, it installs a 2.2 series kernel, but a command line option on install gets you 2.4.18

Re:I know people who still have routers

[BrainInAJar]

"And of course, Debian stable is still 2.2"

Much to my dismay. my laptops' NIC uses a driver that doesn't work with 2.2. I _Need_ 2.4 for it to work. It was a bitch getting anything to run on it properly. X wouldn't load with RH, sound wouldn't load with Mandrake, and then the nic wouldn't load with my CD images of debian. I ended up netinstalling it unstable with bf2.4

Re:I know people who still have routers

[leviramsey]

Just curious, but what was the sound problem on Mandrake?

Re:I know people who still have routers

[BrainInAJar]

No clue. It just wouldn't work. no amount of coaxing got it to, so i reformatted, and installed debian/unstable, and everything's worked since (except now, wlan seems to have decided to die. wlan-ng-conf or whatever the filename is can't find wlan0)

Re:I know people who still have routers

[GrimReality]

I am using Debian Woody 3.0r0 with, I suppose, some security fixes (that apt downloads automatically) from 3.0r1.

I use a wierd on-board audio/video card (i810 DC100) that has works well only with 2.4. So, after installation of 2.2x kernel, I compiled and installed 2.4.x kernel using 'Doing it the Debian way' instructions provided with the source. Now X and sound works, although I don't have an NIC card or laptop so I can't say much about it.

Thank you.

GrimReality
2003-03-10 03:56:15 UTC (2003-03-09 22:56:15 EST)

My webserver still runs Redhat 6.2

[Anonymous Coward]

I try to keep up with all the lastest patches for Apache, Linux, and PHP. I'm finding that it is getting harder to find rpms at http://rpmfind.net. It's also a bitch to compile certain newer versions of applications which requires gcc 3.x. I'm still running gcc 2.95, and it's not compile friendly for some newer versions of apps out there. For example, ffmpeg-0.4.6 wouldn't compile, but ffmpeg-0.4.5 was compilable.

Firewalling

[Snarfvs Maximvs]

I'm running 2.2 on a 233 MHz P2. Why? Because it's my firewall and I don't want to spend calories figuring out how to get MS Netmeeting (for vid-conferencing with the parental units) to work through anything else. It's been running for a good 2-3 years now with no hiccups. Why should I upgrade when it serves my needs perfectly?

Re:Firewalling

[Student_Tech]

I had a machine (on its 3rd motherboard, last 2 died, 1 of which had been purchased specificly for it) that is running 2.2.10 because I couldn't get the ppp stuff upgraded to work with 2.2.12 (clue to the last time I played with it). It is doing a firewall between home network and ISP (over 56K modem) and routing between the 10 Mb/s and 100 Mb/s networks at home (got some 10 only cards and a 100 only hub about 3.5-4 years ago).

Re:Firewalling

[darnok]

Me too - I've got 2.2 running a firewall on a 100MHz Pentium box, and the box does exactly what it's supposed to do, all the time, and has only ever been rebooted in the last 4 years when there's been blackouts in my area.

A 2.4 box would be "cooler", and would probably even have some extra capabilities that I might find useful, but the simple rule is that you don't change something that works perfectly.

Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

It works.

I ran a firewall off of my 2.2.23 box all set up to be secure to the outside and provide a fileserver/print server to the inside as well as being a DSL and dial-up router.

Why would I upgrade and possibly break something?

It does not need X, it is a PII-400, and it does not do anything that is so intensive it needs 2.4

Long live 2.2

Re:Simple

[cscx]

It does not need X, it is a PII-400

I'm missing your logic here. I run Windows Media Services 9 on .NET Server on a PII-350 with 256 MB RAM. It's *damn* snappy. Point is that you could probably run a fileserver/firewall on Linux 2.2 console on a P/200.

Re:Simple

[Waffle Iron]

Why would you install a $700 operating system on a $70 machine?

Re:Simple

[error0x100]

I have a Pentium 166 (64 MB RAM, 2GB HD) running RedHat 6.1 w kernel 2.2 set up as a dial-up router, running squid as a web proxy (with sleezeball to block ads), plus a bit of file sharing and a remote X desktop with icewm over VNC. I am pondering loading RH 8.0 onto the machine, but quite frankly, the current system works, and it works well and fast.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not? Windows Server 2003 (or whatever it's called this week) isn't even on the market yet, but you can download the betas legally (and free(beer)) from MS until then.

Re:Simple

[The Analog Kid]

This makes the least sense possible or your pretty bad at FUDing. Point is maybe all he/she had was a P2-400, so what are you asking him to do, go out any buy a slower processor, you just make no sense or maybe the angle I'm coming at makes not sense. How much logic are you to find in that one sentence?

Re:Simple

[AchilleTalon]

I still have my 486 with 16MB memory running a firewall/DSL router. It is now near 10 years old and still running. This machine is never powered-off, unless there is a black-out. The only problem I had was with the CPU fan I replaced many years ago and the power-supply fan I replaced about two years ago.

Linux Kernel 2.2.X has been continuously updated on this machine without a glitch.

This machine has seen pre-1.0 kernels and was my first PC. I just don't remember the very early Linux distributions I tested on this machine. For sure, Slackware was installed on it at some point in its life.

Re:Simple

[jonadab]

My Pentium/90 dialup router is running 2.2.17-21mdk, just because
I haven't ever bothered to upgrade it. Just about the only change
I've made to it in the last year is set it to forward port 80 to
my desktop, so I can get to my personal Bugzilla and stuff from
work. I used to do a lot of stuff on the router, when my desktop
was running Windows, but with my desktop running Linux/Gnome now
I no longer have to shell into the router to do stuff, except to
redial the ppp link, and that's largely automated.

In another year or so I'll probably replace my desktop, at which
point my current desktop (a PII/233) will probably become the new
dialup router, but in the meanwhile there's not a lot of point in
messing with my current setup. Other things to do with my time,
and all that. Installing a new kernel on my networking hardware
rates right up there with dusting under the bed and flossing the
dog's teeth and watching television: I'm not that bored.

Re:Simple

[Eil]

It does not need X, it is a PII-400, and it does not do anything that is so intensive it needs 2.4

Err, I hope you aren't implying that 2.4 is either bloaty or slow or both on older hardware.

I used 2.4.18 just fine for over a year on a Pentium 166 (no MMX) and had absolutely zero problems. This box was my broadband firewall and also served 60 GB of NFS, as well as SMB, ssh, mail, and apache 2.x web pages, both static and generated. (I know you're not supposed to combine your firewall and other stuff, but I had no choice at the time.) Anyway, this box did its job(s) flawlessly without a single complaint and though building a kernel took on the order of 50 minutes, most things happened instantaneously.

I decided to upgrade it to a Celeron 366 only after I started using a python-based wiki on a daily basis for note-taking. If I really wanted to, I could have hacked up my own program in C that would have been 10x faster but I had the spare hardware and figured I might as well retire the 166. Given all of the improvements of the 2.4 kernel series, I highly doubt that 2.2 is significantly faster than 2.4 (for the same tasks) on all but the very oldest hardware.

The only places that I think would want 2.2 over 2.4 are organizations that have mission-critical stuff running on 2.2 and aren't keen to fix that which isn't broken (if you'll pardon the cliche). Other than that, using 2.4 for most tasks is simply NOT going to cause armageddon. And also remember too that just because some piece of software is OLD doesn't automatically mean it's more STABLE.

Re:Simple

[arkane1234]

I'd have to agree with you completely. Though I have ran both kernels 2.2 and 2.4 on my firewall/router running Coyote Linux (used to run BBIagent, great system but I wanted full commandline control), I find 2.2 to "feel" much nicer when it comes to lesser powered hardware.
I run my firewall/router on a 486dx/66 with 24mb of ram. Right now, it's Coyote Linux because it was the first thing I ran across after wanting to migrate away from BBIagent. With no harddisk, and no moving parts other than fans, it's almost bulletproof. Though, I really need to find another distribution that fits on a floppydisk, because Coyote is missing some *very* rudimentary tools such as that really advanced one called netstat :)

Basically, if it does port forwarding, protection of the machines behind it, along with filtering and logging, your good to go.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding, I run X & KDE 3 on a K6-233 (With 256MB ram), and it is usable. I used it with 128MB for about 6 months, but I wouldn't seriously recommend that configuration for anyone.

X with a lightweight window manger is usable on a 486sx 25Mhz with 4MB of memory. I was able to run AfterStep v .9x, XV, FractInt, Netscape V1 and an xterm (with bash), at the same time on this configuration. If I were really feeling crazy, I could load up Doom and play it, but I'd have to kill FractInt to make it playable. And yea, swap space was needed, I think I had a whopping 16MB of swap at the time.

Re:Simple

[pheared]

If you run a firewall, all the more reason to upgrade to 2.4. Netfilter is far superior to ipchains, in my opinion.

Of course, you may not currently need stateful inspection, but you don't even have the option with 2.2. If you come to a point where you do, you're out of luck. (unless there is a current reliable backport out there, which is possible)

Re:Simple

[tempestdata]

I completely agree.. My router/firewall is a p-75 and is running 2.4.19 just fine. takes ages for a kernel compile though!

Re:Simple

[palfreman]

Don't bother with Redhat on it. You will be delighted by FreeBSD 4.7/4.8. I'm using it on a whole range of machines, from a k6-2/333 desktop to intermediate print/file/dns/dhcp servers, to a 16mb Pentium 75 firewall with no CDROM or floppy, and it is just so much better. The CVSUP update process works so well, and the ports tree is wonderful, if you don't mind waiting around while it compiles stuff. I have upgraded a number of machines previouslly running Redhat 6.2 or 7.0 to FreeBSD 4.x, and it mackes a vastly better upgrade path than bloated later Redhats, and is extremely fast and reliable. Just don't use FreeBSD 5.0/5.x yet because it is not reliable enough yet - it is a pre-production release, and labeled as such.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried FreeBSD and it seems to require a rocket science degree to use it. The reason why I'm still using Redhat 6.2 is because it's so simple and it get things done. The latest version 8.0 scared me with its 1 gig for base install, this is crazy.

Re:Simple

[bn557]

probably one of the miscellaneous walnut creek cdroms. always worth the $25 for 4 CDs of straight rips of the sunsite/wherever archives. I don't believe that I ever did get anything other than 1.0.86 to compile until I finally switched back about 8 months ago. Now being a moron and using 2.5.64-bk. oh well... never do learn.

P

Re:Simple

[HeavensTrash]

Wait, you have a CPU fan on a 486? What was the purpose in that one?

Re:Simple

[rastachops]

That also begs the question of, why would you spend $0 on an operating system for a $3000 server?

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

"Begs the question" does not mean what you think it means.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

It does not need X, it is a PII-400, and it does not do anything that is so intensive it needs 2.4

Nither does 2.4.20 or 2.5.X

in fact I'm betting that the next 10,000,000,000 releases of linux will not require X.

I can fit 2.4.20+tools+FS+webserver on a floppy with room to spare.

why people thing 2.4.X is nay bigger I have no idea.

Perl on the other hand... is so bloated that the smallest you can get it is 8.6 megabytes.. Holy crap that is bloated! (Python can get down to 1.2Meg)

Re:Simple

[DrXym]

It certainly is superior, however from my own experience of moving up, you have to bite the bullet and rewrite your firewall script. While you could leave everything using ipchains, (2.4 has an ipchains module after all), distributions such as Red Hat don't like it very much and some of the network tools won't work when ipchains is running. IP Masquerading (NAT) and VPN also just works which is a compelling reason in itself. If you want VPN in 2.2 you have to arse around downloading kernel patches to enable it.

It's better to rewrite everything to use iptables, though this does require some effort since the syntax is not quite the same. The biggest hurdle is figuring out how to log and drop a packet. In ipchains it is one command, in iptables you must create a new chain that does both actions and redirect packets to that.

Re:Simple

[ldwillo]

I agree. I have essentially the same setup on a Pentium 166 box. I don't have the time to upgrade this masquerade box so I plan on leaving it alone.

Re:Simple

[justanetgod]

reason to upgrade - iptables and stateful packet filtering, something truly missing from 2.2. A whole realm of restrictions can be added to filter at greater depth than with ipchains

Re:Simple

[mattq]

I agree. 2.2 is simple and good. For me it works well for much more then just a firewall/router. My primary surfing machine is a PII-233 running the 2.2 kernel. Why upgrade? It's an old machine, but sends email and browses just fine.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Brian Fellow!!

Re:Simple

[Beliskner]

I still have my 486 with 16MB memory running a firewall/DSL router

For the last 10 years I've had a watch running on a 3 volt Lithium battery. I thought about increasing the chip VCC, overclocking the FSB, and modding the Quartz crystal, but I keep getting the feeling that I should leave it the way it is.

Screw 2.2 and 2.4 bring on 2.6....

[The1stMentor]

2.2?! I can't wait till 2.6 so I can dump slow-ass 2.4 already!

Poor Kid

[Anonymous Coward]

2400 baud modem! Now hes going to grow up with connection envy. And one day post on Slashdot about his oc2400. Sheesh!

Re:Poor Kid

[loveandpeace]

heh. it just keeps his ability to load graphics-intensive sites and play MUDs to a minimum until he's out of kindergarten.

Re:Poor Kid

[Anonymous Coward]

And not a bad idea I think! He may be onto something.

Re:Poor Kid

[Anonymous Coward]

what year is it again?..

Gateway

[yoshi_mon]

My current gateway is a AST 486SX/33 with 16 megs of RAM.

I was able to install RH 6.2 on it and wittle the RPMs I didn't need to get it down to under 200 megs.

While on many of my other servers I run 2.4.x, on this type of box I think 2.2.x suits my needs perfectly.

Re:Gateway

[Whyzzi]

I've got an OpenBSD router on a Cyrix 486 DX2-66 /w 40 Megs of RAM. OpenBSD -current (without X) fits on 175MB without me having to "wittle" down anything.

Re:Gateway

[Lord_Slepnir]

I was able to install RH 6.2 on it and wittle the RPMs I didn't need to get it down to under 200 megs.

so what did you do, exclude emacs?

Still running 2.0 ..

[hsenag]

I'm still running 2.0.x on a couple of machines. It works, they're low spec machines which don't provide many services, why mess with it?

I'll probably be forced to upgrade soon by the lack of security updates for RH 5.x, though :( It's too much hassle tracking it all by hand, even with a minimal package set.

Re:Still running 2.0 ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, same here. RH 5.1 just keeps on trucking. Has worked great for years and there are so many little tweaks and hacks in the config files I really don't feel like rebuilding it from scratch.

Linux zeus 2.0.39 #1 Mon Oct 8 00:19:52 CEST 2001 i686 unknown

The sendmail vulnerability may be the nail in its coffin tho :(

Re:Still running 2.0 ..

[cornette]

I'm still using 2.0.34. At first, I didn't want to upgrade because I had a firewall script (using ipfwadm) that worked, and I didn't want to have to make a new one. The real problem with the computer isn't the kernel, it is the C library. I am quite afraid of upgrading it. I didn't want to risk not being able to use the computer, so I basically left it as it is. I once tried upgrading Perl from 5.004 to 5.005, and it was a disaster; it couldn't find any modules. I have Glibc-2.0.7. I basically can't find precompiled software for that library. Very rarely I can find libc5 packages, which work.

I do have a new computer which I will be switching to eventually. I installed RH 8 on it, but there are a lot of things I am not yet happy about. first of all is the fact that I get no sound from the SB PCI 128. I haven't tried alsa on it yet, hopefully that will work. I have installed Linux on three different computers, and I have not yet once had sound work right away. Why is it so hard? The other problem is the horrible slow desktop. And why the hell do the virtual desktops only have one pane each? What is this, Windows? Ugh. So I need to install fvwm2 on it, and see if I can dump the postprocessed configuration for it that I am using on this computer and modify it for use on the new computer. Also, I need to put on essential programs like elm and tin.

Once I do switch over to the new computer, I will probably try out a few different distros on this old one and see if there is one I like more, since Red Hat probably doesn't plan to get any better.

Re:Still running 2.0 ..

[hsenag]

The sendmail vulnerability may be the nail in its coffin tho :(

I've been running exim almost since I installed the box, so I dodged that bullet, luckily. Learnt to build my own RPMs then too :-)

I have a 2.2 machine...

[powerlinekid]

I have no idea what number it is but it runs my Mac Performa 6360 which is acting as a router. The 2.4 kernel panics anytime it tries to access the cd drive or I look at it funny. Don't get me wrong here, I use 2.4 on everything except in this one case.

Re:I have a 2.2 machine...

[Stonent1]

So a CS network card and a pci one? I wasn't aware that CS devices worked under linux. Good to know. Since I've got a 6360 laying around.

Re:I have a 2.2 machine...

[powerlinekid]

The net card uses the tulip driver and is pci. /proc/pci says its a Digital DECchip 21142/43. Like I said 2.4 is buggy, but works once installed as long as you don't do anything with it ;). I used the 2.2 kernel to get the installation to work. So here is one case where the 2.2 kernel is much much nicer.

Re:I have a 2.2 machine...

[bedouin]

Man, I picked up a Performa 6214CD last year for a few pennies and installed Mklinux on it, but there was no support for the NIC installed, which is an Apple Ethernet LC Twisted-Pair Card, that uses a PDS connector slot. The chip on the card is National Semiconductor DP83934 (SONIC-T).

I tried this page but none of the kernels supported my card. You know of a way to get this card working perhaps, or can you suggest a card for that machine that will work in Linux?

Re:I have a 2.2 machine...

[fdisk3hs]

68k Macs only run on 2.2, and the source code is no longer updated in the 2.5 tree. The Motorola 68k Linux port is almost dead. There are too many changes in 2.5 that breaks all of the code that runs stable in 2.2, which has taken all of this time to get to the point where it is stable.

It's a shame, aside from x86 most of the hardware worldwide that could be used to run Linux rather than the factory OS is Apple... The PPC port is alive and well, of course...

I'm running 2.2 on my Quadra 610, which is pre-IDE, and the SCSI driver doesn't have DMA and frequently kills the kernel when trying to use anything more than one hard drive (2nd drive, CD-ROM, etc)...

Makes me wonder why the kernel has to change so much between versions if entire ports are getting dropped because the code is broken by new changes...

BTW, the Atari and Amiga ports are in the same tree and are also broken.

Looks like any system with a Motorola 68k will be forever doomed to run only 2.2...
LR

Re:I have a 2.2 machine...

[powerlinekid]

My performa is a 160 mhz IBM PowerPC... one of the first powerpc macs IIRC. I've actually seen it, I opened up the mac and there in big letters was IBM. I just started laughing. It does run 2.4 but its buggy beyond belief.

Re:I have a 2.2 machine...

[powerlinekid]

Yeah mine is a 6360 and I picked it up at a surplus store for about $100. However I got 160 mhz IBM PowerPC, 48 megs of ram, 6 gig scsi hd, keyboard, mouse and monitor. Could do a lot worse than $100. Mine has a DEC card in it... I believe a DECChip 21142/43 that uses the tulip driver. Oh I also think this was one of the first models that used pci so you may be out of luck if you have that proprietary apple bus system.

Its tough to say... I was fairly surprised that this card worked. MacOS 8 wouldn't support it without find a driver (whoops, extension)which is nearly impossible considering the age of the machine, where linux picked it right up. Its a nice little machine.

Linux's new target market

[batobin]

I'd say with everything I'm reading about Linux's new target market, a lot of people will leave their kernels. Why? Because they either don't know how to upgrade, or more likely, are not educated on the benefits of upgrading.

Honestly, with the advent of Linux being sold at K-Mart, used in schools, and wielded by mouse-clicking Grandma's, there are bound to be lots of people who don't know they should upgrade their kernels. I personally think marketing Linux to these markets is important, but an equal amount of importance should be recognized in educating these new users in the basics of maintaining these systems.

Because what good is the open source movement if the end user doesn't know how to benefit from our work?

Re:Linux's new target market

[gilesjuk]

Probably why Linux isn't in the top 10 of uptimes on Netcraft, people bringing the system down to change a kernel or recompile a component due to a security hole.

It's quite true what you say Linux for the inexperienced home user, only it's not just kernels either. What about installing new applications? users are used to downloading a setup.exe and running it. With some distros you use a package management tool, others you compile the source code. This will be intollerable for many users, anyway this is deviating from the topic.

Re:Linux's new target market

[syrinx]

FreeBSD:

> cd /ports/whatever
> make all install clean

Just as easy as downloading and running setup.exe, wouldn't you say?

I hear Debian has something similar, though I haven't used it myself.

Not that I'm arguing with you, some people will find things like that "too hard", just because it's different. *shrug*

Re:Linux's new target market

[Alex]

Go on.... Why "should" people upgrade their kernel? What are "the benefits of upgrading"? (to the average K-Mart buying linux user),

Alex

Re:Linux's new target market

[Osty]

more likely, are not educated on the benefits of upgrading.

And those benefits would be ...? I was on the kernel upgrade treadmill for years, getting new versions as they were released, upgrading to 2.2 with the very first version, etc. It gained me very little. I reached a point where staying on top of kernel upgrades was more pain than it was worth, and stopped. Now I only upgrade if I need some new feature, better support for an existing feature, or for security reasons. Aside from security patches (which I would hope all of the "Windows Update"-ish tools would handle for these users already), 99.95% of all Linux users have no reason to upgrade their kernel, so long as they're using a sufficiently modern one to begin with. Why, then, is it such a bad thing that these users don't know how to upgrade their kernel? If anything, I'd say it's a testament to Linux that users running it can get by without ever having to touch the kernel (aside from maybe loading a module or two when they get new hardware, though even that could/should be automated).

Re:Linux's new target market

[Otter]

Not that there are vast numbers of Linux-using grandmothers in reality, anyway, but I'd propose that the overwhelming majority of desktop users, and probably a lot of server admins should be cautious in upgrading.

Distributions provide well-tested, patched kernels. Compulsively updating kernels is a fine hobby if it makes you happy, but unless there's a new feature you need, the potential for breaking something exceeds any practical benefit. The experience of the 2.4 series, where half the kernels substantially degraded performance because of some new half-assed VM only underscores that lesson.

No, if you don't know why you need to upgrade your kernel, you almost certainly don't.

Re:Linux's new target market

[AugstWest]

If there aren't security patches in the kernel, why upgrade a stable server?

If I've got redhat 6.2 servers with security patches installed that are running 24/7 with no hiccups, what's the point of upgrading?

Re:Linux's new target market

[Anonymous Coward]

>> cd /ports/whatever
>> make all install clean
> Just as easy as downloading and running setup.exe, wouldn't you say?
Ummm, no...

follower@iname

Re:Linux's new target market

[stor]

> Just as easy as downloading and running setup.exe, wouldn't you say?

Non-geeks most certainly wouldn't.

When yer mum calls you regarding her shpanky new FreeBSD box and the fact that "some book... or library.. that's it.." needs upgrading are you going to tell her to fire up an xterm, cd into /ports/ and make all install clean. Then claim that's just as easy as double-clicking on a "setup" icon?

You've never done tech support right?

Cheers
Stor

Re:Linux's new target market

[stor]

> cd into /ports/

Should have previewed that or learn to stop using gt and lt signs.

I meant /ports/wherever-the-hell-you-want-mum

Cheers
Stor

Re:Linux's new target market

[BrainInAJar]

freebsd != linux.

If gramma's running, say, debian, it'd read like this: "okay. In your K menu, go to run. then type in apt-get upgrade. Kay, good. it's working. talk to you later oma"

(note: i use windowmaker, and haven't touched KDE in a couple years. i may be wrong as to the location of the run command)

Re:Linux's new target market

[coyote-san]

So do you know what's involved in upgrading your kernel?

This isn't a minor change, major kernel updates usually require updated tools. Hopefully the tools will update cleanly, but it's a non-trivial risk.

The same thing applies to upgrading distro versions. I'm hardly a naive user, yet I have been unsuccessful in every attempt to upgrade my Debian potato systems to woody. I've now given up - I just do a clean install of woody.

Re:Linux's new target market

[gilesjuk]

So the average home user is going to let their computer spend 24 hours compiling OpenOffice are they?

Re:Linux's new target market

[GiMP]

Redhat 7.2 came with 2.4.2 which caused all sorts of problems. The worst problem was that zombied processes would leak memory until the admin had no choice but to reboot the server.

Desktop users may not have noticed the problem too much as it was a simple case of reboting occasionally, but it was a terrible problem for servers.

Re:Linux's new target market

[lewp]

I've felt the way you do for a long time. I've usually got the latest dev kernel on my laptop because of its requirement of a recent ACPI patch (it's one of those legacy-free Toshibas) to get sound and its NVIDIA video card (these two don't go together well), but for every other system I have I don't touch the kernel if I can get away with it.

In this day and age, when most common PC hardware, and certainly any PC hardware worth anything (ie. not the aforementioned laptop), is well-supported under Linux, why do people feel compelled to have the latest kernel? I compile all my kernels on my Athlon XP build machine and even when the compiles are pretty fast (compared to my old 486 box that I first used Linux on) it's not exactly *fun*.

I consider myself a pretty big geek, being thoroughly integrated into the Slashdot hive mind and all. I'm on top of CVS gaim, xine/totem, Mozilla, and GNOME (hoping it won't suck eventually) because they seem to become noticeably better by the day. But the kernel? Could someone please explain why?

Re:Linux's new target market

[Anonymous Coward]

The experience of the 2.4 series, where half the kernels substantially degraded performance because of some new half-assed VM only underscores that lesson.

Ah, someone finally understands why Linus was so cautious about the VM before 2.4. It's such a touchy piece of the kernel, isn't it.

Re:Linux's new target market

[Blkdeath]

So the average home user is going to let their computer spend 24 hours compiling OpenOffice are they?

Yes. Because, see, no Linux distribution has binary packages available. That's, like, against the law or something.

Re:Linux's new target market

[Blkdeath]

When yer mum calls you regarding her shpanky new FreeBSD box and the fact that "some book... or library.. that's it.." needs upgrading are you going to tell her to fire up an xterm, cd into /ports/ and make all install clean. Then claim that's just as easy as double-clicking on a "setup" icon?

You've never done tech support right?

You've never written a shell script right?

Re:Linux's new target market

[cpeterso]

Maybe that new USB digital camera they bought is not supported by Linux 2.2? Improved hardware support is the only tangible reason (to a Joe Kmart user).

Re:Linux's new target market

[Blkdeath]

Go on.... Why "should" people upgrade their kernel? What are "the benefits of upgrading"? (to the average K-Mart buying linux user),

"People" should upgrade their installed software as their distribution vendor tests and certifies it as stable and secure (to the best of their knowledge) and released it to the "stable" branch. Else, they should upgrade as new functionality, drivers, driver bases, etc. is desired (GigE, ACPI/APM enhancements, etc.)

People who run Linux as a hobby "should" upgrade as they feel neccesary, but they'll probably have atleast one workstation on the bleeding edge anyways, so they're a moot point.

People who run servers, casually or professionally, "should" track updates and understand their impact on the remainder of their systems. Their professional, corporate, mission-critical, or otherwise important (generally in the context of "to paying customers", "management" or "other employees") "should" be updated on a semi-regular basis as neccesitated by (potentual/actual) stability or security issues, and after a sufficient testbed period and impact analysis.

In general, an upgrade as major as a kernel (major revision) should be taken with all due consideration. Mostly I'd reccomend a distribution version upgrade (ie; an all-encompassing upgrade procedure that will account for the C library and compiler, all system libraries, shells, and related utilities, as well as the userland).

If an "average K-Mart buying linux user"{sic} wishes to keep their computer's performance and features up to par with what's currently available, they should keep their packages, including their kernel, up to date. With modern GUI-based upgrade procedures as simple as scan, select, apply, ignore, the kernel is just another package, and pre-compiled binary kernels will often come with all the requisite modules and configure itself to become bootable. Minimal input is required by the user, except for perhaps "This upgrade didn't work, I'll boot the previous option and revert."

I know that my workstations are noticeably more responsive since upgrading to 2.4, and I make extensive use of much of the added/enhanced functionality. However, if what you're running works for you, does the job, is stable and secure, and still being maintained (which kernels as far back as 2.0.x still are), there's no definite reason to upgrade. If it ain't broke, and all that. That's the very same reason I still service a lot of Windows'98(SE) customers, and the very reason I'll often reccomend that they stick right where they are. To Linux, FreeBSD, etc. users I'll offer the same advise. Anyone doing otherwise is offering a disservice.

Re:Linux's new target market

[cpeterso]

which version of Linux do you use know? I wonder which oldest kernel is adequate for most desktop users (including decent hardware support).

Re:Linux's new target market

[Christianfreak]

Not that I think there are a bunch of Linux weilding grandma's out there, but I personally am glad that Linux has reached a point where we don't feel like we have to upgrade every other week. I mean isn't that the complaint most of us have about MS?

Its great that we can upgrade, and compile from source if we want to. But not everyone has the time to do it for every minor release of the kernel. For us we trust the distros to provide what's needed.

If 2.2 works for some people, why not keep it?

Re:Linux's new target market

[Stephen VanDahm]

"(note: i use windowmaker, and haven't touched KDE in a couple years. i may be wrong as to the location of the run command)"

You got it right....

Re:Linux's new target market

[Anonymous Coward]

"You've never written a shell script right?"

A so I have to write a shell script for her or maybe handle it remotely for her?

Yes this is all easier than her being self sufficent and clicking a setup file and being guided through. Thank you for enlightening us both.

Re:Linux's new target market

[CoolGuySteve]

Back when I was running CorelLinux 1.1, I was getting tired of it and tried an apt-get potato. Bad idea. It messed up everything. I ended up installing windows, installing BeOS 5 Personal and then deleting windows.

Re:Linux's new target market

[Osty]

The box that still runs 2.2 is a very old, very bastardized version of SuSE 6.3. In other words, upgrading it is not as simple as "apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade", else I would. My other linux box is debian unstable, but even then I tend not to touch the kernel unless I really have to. Depending on your needs, I'd say either the latest 2.2 (anything with the most recent security patches) or later 2.4 kernels would be good. I'm running 2.2.19 with the bridged firewall backport and 2.4.19 from SGI's XFS CVS. They work just fine for me.

Re:Linux's new target market

[Blkdeath]

A so I have to write a shell script for her or maybe handle it remotely for her?

Yes this is all easier than her being self sufficent and clicking a setup file and being guided through. Thank you for enlightening us both.

Ahh.. So I see you've never written a shell script, then.

Since you're apparently so thick-skulled to understand, I'll enlighten you with some pseudo-code;

Present greeting / instructional text
Input desired package name / search term(s)
Search package system for above
Present possible matches
Request input - which package name to install?
Change to requisite directory, run requisite installation commands
Output indication of success / failure.
Install more software, Mum?

The above pseudo-code is portable to FreeBSD and Gentoo both, as well as, I'm sure, Debian, with the exception that the latter two don't require the "Change to requisite directory" step, as their package systems are PWD agnostic.

If you wanted to get really fancy, you could even fire up a few quick GUI dialogue boxes requesting / outputting the information. If you wanted to go slightly further, I'm sure you could whip up an output dialog that actually allowed Mum/GrandMum to click on the desired package and send its name back to your oh-so-complex shell script.

Really tough, huh?

Or, if you're too lazy or strapped for time (or incompetent) that you can't write a ten-line shell script, so be it. You could have her use one of the many, many, many distribution-specific software installation/update tools. SuSE has a nice one, for example, where you click a category then select the package. It gives lovely descriptions of the software, and warns you that there are requisite dependancies (which it handles automagically for you, unless you tell it not to). It also comes bundled with software upgrade functionality.

Gee whiz, that's even more complicated. So now we have a one-stop-shopping application that will allow *Mum to upgrade or install any of a selection of thousands of packages on her system? Damn! This is getting WAY more difficult!

OR! we could tell her to download the proper distribution packages (RPMs, .DEBs, etc.) for her required application(s) from the software download page, save them to her home directory, and, using her desktop's file manager, {double} click the file and watch the magic unfold as file association sees the package installing, in an Xterm or a custom (again, distribution specific) GUI installation dialogue.

Man, this Linux stuff is, like, really difficult.

Hey, let me guess - you're an avid Slackware-for-lifer, or Linux-From-Scratch-Or-Die type who hasn't even bothered to look at a modern distribution that's targetted towards the end-user market because, of all things, your blind elitism inspired ignorance would prevent you from doing so, right? I mean, we wouldn't want a few facts to get in the way of a good Slashdot rant now, would we?

But it's a good thing you posted this as anonymous. I sure wouldn't want people laughing at me by name. Then again, I usually try to think before comitting my words to (e)paper.

Re:Linux's new target market

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite frankly since like 2.4.1 I've been upgrading more due to constant bugs than constant new features, as sound, ethernet, filesystem's, etc have had new (and sometimes sloppy) bugs found and squished. Featurewise, everything I really want is in 2.4.0 and with a few exceptions, 2.2.

Re:Linux's new target market

[Osty]

I consider myself a pretty big geek, being thoroughly integrated into the Slashdot hive mind and all. I'm on top of CVS gaim, xine/totem, Mozilla, and GNOME (hoping it won't suck eventually) because they seem to become noticeably better by the day. But the kernel? Could someone please explain why?

Like I said, I was on that kernel upgrade treadmill, and I think it's a bit of an addiction. You want the bragging rights to say that you're running whatever the latest and greatest version of the kernel happens to be. For most people, it's about showing off and making themselves feel superior because they're running the latest stuff. I think it goes the same for the rest of the stuff you mentioned as well. Once those projects get to the "good enough" point, what do you gain by using the CVS nightly drop vs. a released version? Why not Mozilla 1.1 (or whatever Mozilla is at now) rather than CVS? I used to do the same thing with Microsoft stuff. I ran various betas of Internet Explorer (IE4, IE5, IE6), and even had various RC releases (all legally acquired) of XP and Win2K (even back before Win2K was Win2K). Now, though, I'd rather get my work done instead of futzing with my system.

Re:Linux's new target market

[HerbieStone]

Well most people don't even know what a kernel is. My ex gf mixes up Windows and Word. Many People I know don't know what OS is for, and I don't know why they should.

Re:Linux's new target market

[Erik Hollensbe]

I think the argument is (since long, long ago, I was doing tech support too), that sometimes it's hard enough to get people to POINT AND CLICK over the phone, much less, type things.

Read your shell script (or even better, a perl script) out loud, and that might just give you the slightest on how hard it might be to do something like that over hte phone.

Of course, to provide a counter-argument to this one, something that I do with a couple of linux-using friends is set them up with sshd and an account for me, tell them to get on the net and discover their ip address, and do it myself.

Re:Linux's new target market

[jonathan_ingram]

Read your shell script (or even better, a perl script) out loud, and that might just give you the slightest on how hard it might be to do something like that over hte phone.

Yet another argument for Python over Perl, then :).

Re:Linux's new target market

[Jedi Alec]

Ah, if it were only as easy as double-clicking an rpm...speaking from the perspective of a Windows user with a couple of years tech-support experience who happens to have a spare harddrive on which I installed Linux "for fun" please allow me to tell you it just isn't that simple. I downloaded some rpm's left and right to install stuff like Wine for example and double-clicking the buggers just didn't do the trick. Opening up the command line and executing the rpm's by hand revealed that a couple of command line switches had to be added in order for it to work properly, but in order to find that out I already had to go through obscure text files, and check a couple of websites. So far I've been able to find 1(one) piece of software that under Linux installs as easily as it does under Windows, and that's Mozilla.

Re:Linux's new target market

[podperson]

If an "average K-Mart buying linux user"{sic} wishes to keep their computer's performance and features up to par with what's currently available, they should keep their packages, including their kernel, up to date.

In general, the way to keep a given piece of hardware's performance up to par with what's currently available is not to upgrade anything. I'd be willing to put WriteNow 1.0 running on a 512k original Mac under Mac OS 3.2 up against a fully kitted up box of your choice running the latest kitchen sink word processor.

Re:Linux's new target market

[Blkdeath]

I think the argument is (since long, long ago, I was doing tech support too), that sometimes it's hard enough to get people to POINT AND CLICK over the phone, much less, type things.

Shell scripts can be linked to with a pretty icon of your choosing, and placed on users' desktops and/or graphical interface menus. With some tweaks, as I mentioned previously, you can make your shell script a seamless back-end to a purdy GUI interface.

Read your shell script (or even better, a perl script) out loud, and that might just give you the slightest on how hard it might be to do something like that over hte phone.

Tech support? Shell code? Telephone? Why? If they can't figure out a proper implementation of my pseudocode, they probably can't figure out how to find and install Windows software, either.

1. Click icon.
2. Type search term.
3. Click desired package.
4. Rinse, Repeat.

How do you expect them to otherwise download and install Windows software?

1. Find software search site.
2. Type search terms.
3. Select desired software package.
4. Find download link.
5. Save software installer to "somewhere" on disk.
6. Locate said saved software, double click.
7. Follow instructions.
8. Repeat as needed.

See, the benefeits of Linux distributions' software distribution methods is the all-inclusive nature of it. If it's worth having, it's probably already in there. When you seloect one of them for installation, the package management system does all the work for you. Heck, my pseudocode could be written into one shell script that's portable for all command-line based package management systems with a few if/then/else and some environment variables.

Now; why do they need to know the contents of the shell script again? As far as they're concerned, it's an icon, a program, an installer, a gift from Tux, whatever. The beauty of such a system is the fact that they never have to know!

Of course, to provide a counter-argument to this one, something that I do with a couple of linux-using friends is set them up with sshd and an account for me, tell them to get on the net and discover their ip address, and do it myself.

Yeah, I tried that too. I found that they remained quite useless, and were rather annoying to boot. I started taking a hands-off, "try it for yourself" approach, and lo and behold, they don't need to ask for help anymore.

Re:Linux's new target market

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh, you don't seem to be running linux in any production system, I won't be upgrading my mail servers before I have to upgrade the hardware and that's not going to be soon (four way Intel boxes 400 MHz Xeon 1 MB L2) (uptime average 250 days and thats only because major power cuts).

Re:Linux's new target market

[MSjogren]

The same thing applies to upgrading distro versions. I'm hardly a naive user, yet I have been unsuccessful in every attempt to upgrade my Debian potato systems to woody. I've now given up - I just do a clean install of woody.

That's odd. I upgraded my parents' potato box (my father uses it to write LaTeX) to woody without any glitches. apt-zip is your friend! Trust apt-zip!

Re:Linux's new target market

[gilesjuk]

The guy mentioned FreeBSD ports, which is a source code compiling system.

Then there's drivers for hardware, if a driver isn't included in your kernel you often have to download source code and compile that. This isn't a simple as running device manager.

I'm a full time Linux user, but I can see the obstacles to it being adopted by many users.

Re:Linux's new target market

[frozencesium]

the debian way:
apt-get install openoffice.org

openoffice.org is a meta package that will grab the binaries for openoffice.

-frozen

Re:Linux's new target market

[juhaz]

Nothing ever gets so good that it couldn't be made even better.

I recently used a nightly build of mozilla some time, because it fixed something that has bothered me for a long time (word-break detection, eg. in url-bar it's very useful to have ctrl-right/left to stop at all regularly used separators, /,=,&,?,. etc. After the next release came along, I started using that, but even this is 1.3b, there still isn't a stable with this "bug" fixed.

No superiority complexes, I wanted something and to get it I had to use cutting edge stuff.

And I will do same again if they, for example, fix type-ahead find so it works on pages with frames.

Re:Linux's new target market

[Anonymous Coward]

If an "average K-Mart buying linux user"{sic} wishes to keep their computer's performance and features up to par with what's currently available, they should keep their packages, including their kernel, up to date.

It's very likely that earlier versions of the "average K-Mart buying linux user" are still running Windows 95, completely happy with their ability to send and receive email, browse the web, balance their checkbooks (using their copy of Quicken 98, that also still works fine). They might consider upgrading when the snazzy new game everyone's talking about won't run, but even that will more likely be because the hardware is too outdated. Even then they're not likely to fully grasp the distinction between "Windows 95" and "Windows XP"-they're more likely to be happy with the recognition that the "new computer" looks different than the "old computer".

Re:Linux's new target market

[Grax]

I have 2 machines with the 2.2 kernel with 634 days of uptime
but even if Netcraft could see them instead of the load balancer
it couldn't tell what their uptimes were because of there is an upper limit of 497 for detecting uptimes for several operating systems.
(I get their uptime by doing "ls -ald /proc" and subtracting proc's date from today's date)

There is no reason to reboot a machine when re-compiling to plug a security hole.

Re:Linux's new target market

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I find this a little contemptable. Installing software under Slackware has to be the easiest of any distro I've tried. You don't have to futz with all those stupid command line switches of rpms, or get the depenancy hell issues of rpm or debs. I've never personally looked into creating a GUI app to install them, but that's because I personally never felt the need to.

If I did, it'd be pretty damned simple to do.

Re:Linux's new target market

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen alot of perfectly good, well running (for W9x) Windows 95 & 98 machines upgraded to Windows XP because "the computer store" said it would be good. After they finish upgrading their modem/sound/hard drives/scanner, etc, they realized it was good for the store and they basically bought another computer through 'upgrades'.

Re:Linux's new target market

[Blkdeath]

>> If an "average K-Mart buying linux user"{sic} wishes to keep their computer's performance and features up to par with what's currently available, they should keep their packages, including their kernel, up to date.

In general, the way to keep a given piece of hardware's performance up to par with what's currently available is not to upgrade anything.

If you'd respond to what I said, it's just the opposite, actually. Or were you going for a contradiction?

New software generally fixes bugs and adds features/functionality, the kernel included (especially). Modern desktop users, for example, would greatly appreciate KDE 3.1's appearance and functionality over that of KDE 1.0.

I'd be willing to put WriteNow 1.0 running on a 512k original Mac under Mac OS 3.2 up against a fully kitted up box of your choice running the latest kitchen sink word processor.

One of my clients just sent me a Microsoft Office 2000 document. Let's open them at the same time and see who's editing the text first, shall we?

Sorry chum, but out in the real world you can't use an ancient, obsolete hardware and software combination merely because it's quick at a single task at a time. My clients need to have an e-mail client, word processor, spreadsheet, accounting package, web browser, and, say, fax software open simultaneously. They need the up-to-date functionality and document import/export functionality of modern software packages. If that means they have to replace their computers every 2-3 years (or upgrade piece-meal as required), so be it.

Any clients we have running Windows'95 the first thing we reccomend is an upgrade. Pretty soon, when it goes EOL, Windows'98 would be in the same boat. By the same token, SuSE 5, Slackware 3, RedHat 5, etc. users would be given the same reccomendation. Those distributions are just too old to meet current requirements.

As far as the home users are concerned, they start to get cheesed when they can't view the web pages their mother-in-law keeps e-mailing them about, or open the documents their friends send them, or ...

If we were just talking about a machine on which a letter was inputted from the keyboard, perhaps saved for future reference only, and printed off, sure, I'd agree with you. But nowadays it's entirely impractical to waste the hydro and real estate on such a paperweight.

Re:Linux's new target market

[syrinx]

Heh, my mom can't even manage the setup.exe thing, so I don't really know. (No, I've never done tech support, but I will be probably this summer, so get back to me then once I've been broken ;) ). I just figure "Download setup.exe, go find it (since my mom never manages to download it to the desktop), double click it, yes the defaults are fine, yes, keep going, yes" is basically the same number of steps as "open a terminal, type cd /ports/the-program-name, type make all install clean".

I know, one involves typing, which some people find difficult, but I'm just drawing on my own experience; my parents have been using computers since DOS 3.0, so they aren't completely scared of a command line. :)

Re:Linux's new target market

[podperson]

My example was merely an extreme one to make a point: in general (and with relatively few exceptions), more modern software is SLOWER than older software.

And giving an example of a Microsoft Word 2000 document is pretty idiotic. Let's start with a WriteNow 1.0 document, how's Word handle that? Or let's see, maybe a Photoshop 7.0 document?

So a typical K-mart type will tend to experience performance REDUCTION if they get the latest and greatest software (without new hardware).

Re:Linux's new target market

[Blkdeath]

And giving an example of a Microsoft Word 2000 document is pretty idiotic. Let's start with a WriteNow 1.0 document, how's Word handle that?

Is your head comletely in the sand? Like it or not, Microsoft Office is the present de facto standard for personal and business documents. I'd be willing to bet that no more than 0.5% of my entire customer base have ever even HEARD of "WriteNow", letalone have need to open a document in same.

I dare say, sir, that your example is more "idiotic" than mine, and suggest that you wake up to the world around you before making further ill-considered comments.

Re:Linux's new target market

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the damn FAQ.

The OSes in the top 10 uptimes on Netcraft are those that netcraft can accurately determine uptime on over 497+ days.

Linux uptime wraps, since they store it in an uint32. I have a few linux boxes at work that report an uptime of ~50 days. They've been up for well over 500 days.

How about 2.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still running a 2.0-based kernel as a mail server (qmail) in my house. AMD K6-2/266, 64MB RAM, 6GB disk space. Been running for 2-1/2 years as a mail server and 3 years prior to that doing IP masquerading for a RoadRunner account I used to have. Have another machine ready to install RH 8.0 on and finally retire it...

Is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

or is there absolutely NOTHING on slashdot with any actual value to anyone right now?

the front page is shit, shit, and more shit. its kind of ridiculous.

i remember when going to slashdot was fun, but now its gay. In fact, most of the time I go to Trolltalk before I visit the main page (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=20721) because Vlad making an assfaggot out of himself is always more entertaining and worthwhile then the shit that has been here lately.

I guess this is pretty much the end of Slashdot. All-time low subscription rates with no real benefit is going to kill them.

So long, and thanks for the memories!

Changelog

[SexyTr0llGal]

Found the changelog here. It reads:

Linux 2.2.24-rc5

* Fix n_hdlc globals pollution (Paul Fulghum)
* Fix initialisation of sk->sleep (Holger Smolinksi)
* Handle init_ethdev returning null in tulip (Neale Banks)
* Backport rtc wildcard fix to 2.2 (Paul Gortmaker)
* Correct wireless config help (Neale Banks)
* Fix smc9194 build (me)

Re:Changelog

[nadaou]

The reason for the missing 2.2.24 changlelog is because between -rc5 and 2.2.24 there isn't one. It's the same thing with the tag changed, just aged for a couple of weeks for confidence, ala Debian/testing or Marcelo style.

[note the tag change was from -rc4 apparently as -rc5 missed that]

Re:Changelog

[Kourino]

Remember, that's just the changelog from -rc4 to -rc5. There's more changes between .23 and .24, unfortunately Alan doesn't seem to keep as accurate changelogs in 2.2.

sun4d SMP support

[Anonymous Coward]

I run 2.2.23 on my 8 Processor Sparcserver1000E (with 2GB Ram)...

I can't use 2.4 (or 2.3) because sun4d SMP support got broken for 2.3 and never got fixed. If I use anything except 2.2 I can only use one CPU :(

Re:sun4d SMP support

[Anonymous Coward]

Solaris is probably better for that system.

After all, it's what Sun wrote it for...

Re:sun4d SMP support

[Anonymous Coward]

2.4 broke a lot of non-x86 ports. There still isn't a single m68k Mac that will boot a 2.4 kernel.

why 2.2? simple answer

[StandardDeviant]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

There's some nice things in 2.4, certainly (e.g. USB support that works). My home machines and laptop run it. But many of the servers I admin have been humming along fine with the 2.2 tree for quite some time, so I see very little reason to upgrade (indeed, with the hairiness in the 2.4 tree's virtual memory handling, I can several reasons NOT to upgrade beyond just change management). (Some will say that you should upgrade to 2.4 for the new firewalling features, but I prefer to put firewalling onto a dedicated openbsd machine or an appliance like a netscreen so the issue is moot for me.)

I'm running ...

[B3ryllium]

kernel 1.0.1

It kind of itches a little.

Re:I'm running ...

[Anonymous Coward]

X.0.1 are development kernels. The itch was patched in 1.0.2.

Re:I'm running ...

[B3ryllium]

but what if I like the itch?

Re:I'm running ...

[Hard_Code]

Have you tried Gold Bond Medicated Kernel Powder?

Re:I'm running ...

[B3ryllium]

Is it in ports, or is it more of an apt thing?

(Yes, that's right. I run FreeBSD! I lied! ha-HAH!)

Re:I'm running ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately a regression error reintroduced the scratch from 1.0.0.

If it ain't broke

[spickus]

I have two 486 DX4's running 2.2.20. They work fine like they are. Updating from 2.2.x to 2.4.x would be a pain the butt. I'll leave them as is until they die of old age.

EnGarde Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

EnGarde Linux uses 2.2 kernels+lids.

me

[Anonymous Coward]

most of my systems are 2.2.19(some are heavily patched by 3rd party patches/updated drivers). I only started testing 2.4.x for deployment 3 months ago. I don't anticipate rolling 2.4.x out in the immediate future. 2.2.19 has been ROCK solid for years. 2.4.20 is finally getting the 2.4.x tree to a stable point where I can evaluate it more. i.e. 2.4.20 is about as mature (IMO) as 2.2.10 was(my first 2.2.x kernel version deployment).

I have 1 2.2.23 system, which I updated in december after the machine lost it's 634 day uptime due to a 10 hour power outage.

I'm still 2.2

[LightningTH]

I'm still on 2.2. Waiting for OpenWall to go to 2.4 stable for the kernel as I use OpenWall and LIDS in my kernel compile.

Re:I'm still 2.2

[kollaps]

Your in the same boat as I am though I am considering the PAX patch instead of Openwall to get to 2.4. That plus the newest 2.2 LIDS patch doesn't seem to work right for me....

Debian Kernel

[mslinux]

Debian use tried and tested software, their kernel sources contain quite a few bugfixes too.

Debian uses the vanilla kernel from kernel.org.

Re:Debian Kernel

[ocelotbob]

Wrong. Debain applies a few patches to their kernels as well. While not as many as the level of patches Redhat et al apply, they still apply some. Looking at the README.Debian included with 2.4.20, the big ones I can see are the bigmem patch, cramfs support, NFS performance tweaks, and a few dozen other patches.

Trustix

[oZZoZZ]

Until Trustix 2.0 comes out, I'll be using 2.2.. it's fast, secure and stable, why bother upgrading?

Re:Trustix

[homer_ca]

I'm still on Trustix 1.2, but 1.5 is the current release. I like it too. You'd think a lean and mean RPM distro is an oxymoron, but that's exactly what Trustix is.

My Toshiba Satelitte

[Anonymous Coward]

My dinky 4 year old Toshiba Satelitte that's currently running Redhat 6.2

I use this sucker for one thing only, to console into UNIX machines and cisco switches/routers using minicom through the serial port. I don't think I'll even bother upgrading the kernel. There's no ethnetport on this oldie but still functional.

My main reason for keeping 2.2 around...

[samrolken]

I don't really have a choice. It's well-known that the 2.4 kernels can't compile properly for the 32-bit sparc architecture. http://www.rocklinux.org/mailing-list/rock-ports/2 001-7/5.html -- Sam Kennedy

Re:My main reason for keeping 2.2 around...

[JPriest]

Why, who have you met that has ever seen a 32 bit sparc?

Re:My main reason for keeping 2.2 around...

[Tester]

I use 2.4.20 on debian stable on a SparcClassic and s SparcStation 5 and it works very well. I never had any problem with it.. And with the speed of the disk on that thing, I really need ext3, because when my roomate pulls the plug I can't really wait 3 hours before my firewall is back up.. SparcClassics make really nice firewall especially if you find a scsi-1 hardware that's not too noisy..

Re:My main reason for keeping 2.2 around...

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of Sparc systems are 32-bit. We currently have about four dozen here at work running Linux and have had about (wild-guess) 2,000 of them over the years when we used them for CAD stations and upgraded every year. I have never seen a Sparc with a 64-bit processor.

Re:My main reason for keeping 2.2 around...

[pitr256]

Although kind of true at the time, great strides have bee made recently in getting 2.4 SMP working on 32bit SPARC. 2.4 UP has been working for some time now.

You should check out the latest kernels, 2.4.21-pre5 from Rob Radez available for download at http://osinvestor.com/sparc/debs/

There are still some issues to work out like swapon segfaults, but otherwise it's pretty stable.

Re:My main reason for keeping 2.2 around...

[Benley]

Same here. I have 2.4.20 running on a SparcStation 20 (SMP even, dual sm71), and it makes an excellent firewall all decked out with its 6 ethernets (onboard, a 10mbit+scsi card, and a QFE). I've got an Ultra1 waiting to take over in case this falls over dead, but that's another story.

Anyway, for whatever reason Debian doesn't provide a prebuilt kernel for sun4m, but it was easy enough to build myself.

Re:My main reason for keeping 2.2 around...

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried stripping the kernel?

It turned out my only serious problem with getting it to run on my SS-20 UP machine was that it's nearly impossible to get a kernel compiled for it that's below the one meg limit for booting that still has all the comment tag junk in it.

Re:My main reason for keeping 2.2 around...

[ader]

I have a Classic running RHL 6.2 because that was the last supported release on SPARC. It's been extremely stable (KDE/GNOME apps run like dying dogs though). However, my new SS5 will run Aurora Linux 1.0, which is based on RHL 7.3 and has a 2.4 kernel.

Ade_
/

Re:My main reason for keeping 2.2 around...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a SparStation 20 with two HyperSPARC running Debian 3.0 stable. It doesn't work with kernel 2.4 (doesn't boot), but kernel 2.2 runs perfectly.

Re:Internet Radio Linking Project

[Anonymous Coward]

>The IRLP system uses gpg for encryption and authentication
>to prevent **rouge** users from connecting and taking control
>of machines over the network

So what do you have against rosy cheeks?

Need 2.2 for microsecond packet timing.

[Chmarr]

I've written a little application around libpcap that needs the microsecond resolution for packet arrival times. 2.2 has that. 2.4 only gives me 10 millisecond resolution.

Re:Need 2.2 for microsecond packet timing.

[corsec67]

microsecond? I guess that rules out anything from microsoft, except maybe DOS.

Re:Need 2.2 for microsecond packet timing.

[Effugas]

Chmarr--

Try this:

int immediate = 1; ...
ioctl(pcap_fileno(pcap), BIOCIMMEDIATE, &immediate);

Does screw with some nonblocking modes, though.

Another quick tip: __attribute__ ((packed)); after your structure declarations will make structs vastly nicer to apply against raw packets in a cross platform manner.

Whatcha trying to write?

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

Re:Need 2.2 for microsecond packet timing.

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need support from your operating system to get high granularity timers if you're running on a modern x86 system.

Pentium High Performance Timers

Re:Need 2.2 for microsecond packet timing.

[Chmarr]

Thanks, I'll give it a try and see what I get.

I've written (not trying ;) a latency meter. Measures the time between the same packet appearing at two ethernet ports. I'm using the difference between the timestamp as reported by libpcap as the 'latency', but I also apply a little filtering to remove time recording noise, and a small amount of priority bias.

Microsecond resolution works pretty well. 10-millisecond resolution just doesn't cut it.

Re:Need 2.2 for microsecond packet timing.

[Effugas]

You might want to try out FreeBSD -- if it was any faster, you'd probably transmute ethernet into firewire (and sustain 3rd degree burns in the process).

I gather you're monitoring latency between two ports on the same host, as opposed to a multihost system?

--Dan
www.doxpara.com

Re:Need 2.2 for microsecond packet timing.

[Chmarr]

Two ports on the same host. The ports are connected to various points on a network to measure latency between those parts. The setup we have is fast enough, as long as the timestamps are accurate enough.

Is this the long awaited

[infonography]

Sanders Kernel? I always know to trust the Kernel.

Re:Is this the long awaited

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm Kentucky Fried Linux...

Re:Is this the long awaited

[haroldK]

I always hated the Kernel, with his wee, beady eyes and that smug look on his face! "Oooh, you're gonna buy my chicken, oooh!"

Linux 2.2.x?

[JWSmythe]

People still use 2.2.x?

Just kidding. :)

As I recall, I had some old old Slackware machines . I don't even remember the version number, but I think they started out with a 2.0.x kernel. On most of our machines, I didn't really want to take them down til they died of old age or whatever (usually we wanted faster machines over time), but kept upgrading the kernels on some occasionally for new features.. As I recall, we just couldn't get the 2.4.x kernels to even compile on them, without library upgrades, which I wasn't prepared to do (and probably mess up) on a whole bunch of machines. :)

But, I'm sure there are plenty of people out there with 2.2.x still, who haven't had a need to upgrade. I was just working on a machine a few days ago, that is, and there's no need to upgrade, it works fine.

> uname -a
Linux foo.bar.com 2.2.13 #3 Sun Nov 21 18:45:36 EST 1999 i586 unknown

That machine is still running strong. We just upgraded the CPU, motherboard, and memory, but it was all compatable with the drivers that were compiled in back in 1999.. :) The CPU went up from an AMD 300Mhz to AMD 450Mhz.. hehe. Free upgrades are the best, right?

2.2 kernel...

[dennism]

I've got a Redhat 6.2 machine running 2.2.21... and I doubt if I'll even update it to .24. The only reason it was upgraded to .21 was because I swapped out the 10mbit network card for a 100mbit.

It's been running fine pretty much non-stop for 4 years now. The only time it ever is rebooted is when the power goes out (yeah, I know...)

It's rock solid, and serves as my apache and SSH server to the outside and my FTP, MySQL, NFS, Telnet and AppleTalk server to the inside. To top it off, it's running SETI@Home and it's on a P120 with 32 megs of RAM, with no swap space being used. Not too bad, in my opinion.

Unless I suddenly get a big outgoing bandwidth upgrade, and an increase in activity to go along with it, I don't think I'll ever be upgrading this machine :D

I'm running 1.0!

[gatesh8r]

feh who needs hard drives larger than 540 MB anyway? A 386 with a 387 FPU with 8 MB RAM is more than enough for me! Sheesh all this bloat... for what?

Re:I'm running 1.0!

[EmbeddedJanitor]

with a 387 FPU

I must get one of them newfangled things.

torn

[awing0]

I don't know, I'm always torn between losing my uptime and installing the latest kernel. Its a lose/lose situation. If slashdot wouldn't announce the new 2.2 kernel I could just go on believing I had the latest code and it wouldn't bother me. But now that I know there's a new kernel, I'll have to compile it and bear the pain of losing my (not much, but around 130 days now) uptime. Thanks again for dragging me out of my sheltered update life.

Re:torn

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe me, I know how you feel. I've got an HP-UX box with 3 years and 94 days of uptime.

Re:torn

[Erik Hensema]

Hehe :-)

Seriously, long uptimes are for kiddies who want to show off. A planned reboot now and then should be no problem at all (if it is, you're in big trouble).

The higher the uptime, the higher the probability that the running configuration differs from the saved configuration. Maybe the admin has tweaked some settings and didn't save them in scripts. When the machine reboots, it resets to the saved configuration, which can be a bad thing. This causes downtime. And downtime is what matters to the real professionals.

I don't care about uptime at all. I care about downtime.

Last time I rebooted, after an uptime of about 45 days, one of the IPv6 routes didn't come up on my router box. I didn't notice this right away, causing a downtime of two hours on that service (yes, that stupid 'uptime' counter in the kernel still ticked). A reboot right after tweaking my settings would have prevented this.

Re:torn

[maximilln]

Don't you check kernel.org at least once per week?

Not really finding anything that's particularly necessary in 2.4.x I have thoughtfully considered backgrading to 2.2.x. I can't find any 2.4 attributable problems however. Now that I'm here I'll probably stay here unless a network security hole that's 2.4 specific slaps me in the face.

+++ATHZ

Re:torn

[Fizzl]

Always keep everything in modules. This way you most likely only need to compile them and reload :)

(Okay, so I don't know if something changed this time that is not in modules)

2.2 4 3v3r

[seelevarcuzzo]

ill prolly stick with the 2.2 series on my sparc20 until it dies, only because i cant compile 2.4 (although it *should* work :( ) cant say i have much experience with 2.4.. im a freebsd bitch

Re:2.2 4 3v3r

[Dashslot]

I have 2.4.19 on my SS20 (60mhz cpu). It took ~150 minutes to compile, but once done, it works a treat.

Re:2.2 4 3v3r

[Anonymous Coward]

i cant compile 2.4 ...
im a freebsd bitch

well youre half right... *rimshot*
[/troll]

Re:2.2 4 3v3r

[dotgain]

Sparc 20 - Die??
I'll use 2.2.20 on _my_ Sparc 20 until _I_ die you insensitive clod!

arch conservatism at it's finest is

[kraksmoka]

what you get when you choose a security through obscrurity strategy within an open source deployment. how many script kiddies know MIPS assembler? my little cobalt raq2 is a lovely server running a 2.0 kernel :)

ok, there are some limitations, but, on the whole, i get great performance out of the little beast.

Re:arch conservatism at it's finest is

[Stonent1]

what you get when you choose a security through obscrurity strategy within an open source deployment. how many script kiddies know MIPS assembler? my little cobalt raq2 is a lovely server running a 2.0 kernel :)

Yep I've got a web server running OpenBSD 2.7 on a SparcClassic. I feel the same way.

Re:arch conservatism at it's finest is

[Chatterton]

Like me when I was running my apache on Win 98 :-) I love to see all thoses IIS/NT attack trying to access C:/winnt :-) Now I have a Debian for it because I have needed SSH and I couldn't get it work on Windows :-/ But now I do a lot more with it, becaus I can compile my own 1 disk distro for my firewall (I was hard to do it on windows :-))

Simple. Features. I.E. Transparent Proxy

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a feature in 2.2 that let you tuck the source IP address into unused space in the sock_addr structure so you could control the source address of packets. This went away in 2.3 and upward.

We have software that depends on this that we don't want to switch to using SOCK_RAW or ETHERTAP or a bazillion aliased network devices or whatever, so we stick with 2.2. (Intercal comes to mind. If networking only had a SENDFROM!).

Plus it is small and compiles fast.

-- ac at home

Traffic Shaping Question

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still running 2.2 on my Router/Fileserver (an old iP100), because it's stable (up 284 days) and I don't want to re-write the whole firewall.

But now, I do need better QoS (using HTB right now) for filesharing users and gamers on my LAN. So I'm thinking of switching, because I heard iptables are more effective?

Embedded devices

[Anonymous Coward]

There seems to be an assumption that we are only talking about workstations/servers when it comes to if the 2.0 or 2.2 kernel is still in use. The reality is that the Linux kernel is in use on embedded devices and it is not always desirable to try to be bleeding edge with such devices. Once you get a 2.0 or 2.2 kernel to fit withen the design limitations of an embedded device, upgrading may mean rethinking the hardware and starting from scratch. For example, I would be willing to bet that the majority of Agenda Computing/VR3 devices will never be upgraded to version 2.4 of the kernel.

Re:Embedded devices

[dfj225]

yea...thats pretty much true for any embeded device (not just linux ones). Rarely do they get updated. Well, I gtg, I have to install a new patch on my microwave :-P

Re:Embedded devices

[kieltux]

The Agenda VR3 runs 2.4.0-test9. And the Agenda Community is working on Kernel 2.4.19/20 for VR3.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/agos

RH 6.0 plus 2.2.13 and 2.2.14 on another system

[Anonymous Coward]

An even older one at work. I cannot
remember. Lots of newer ones though

Re:why 2.2? simple answer

[GRH]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

No kiddin. My headless P100 MP3 player/server has been 2.2.19 since that kernel was released and it's never gone down (except for having to move the machine a few times).

It's behind my 2.4.20 firewall, so I'm not too concerned about security updates or patches on the old box.

So, in the end, a 2.4 upgrade would provide nothing, and waste a day of my time. There's your reason.

Re:linux is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

There, there, Mr. Gates. No need to use profanity while logged in under your troll account.
The history of Information Technology will always revere you as an astute businessman, if not exactly a friend of competition.

How does the IBM/SCO legal debacle effect this?

[Lodragandraoidh]

Can anyone comment on if and how the SCO lawsuit may or may not effect linux kernel distros now or in the future?

I wouldn't throw away the earlier kernels just yet. It may not effect your average mom and pop operation, but a legal injunction would curtail alot of corporate projects that are currently using linux.

It would be nice to see someone respond who is very familiar with the kernel development and these issues.

Re:How does the IBM/SCO legal debacle effect this?

[Gyorg_Lavode]

Since it sounds as if SCO does not have a foot to stand on, I doubt the lawsuit will effect the kernels at all.

Re:How does the IBM/SCO legal debacle effect this?

[Anonymous Coward]

They might, but one beautifully simple and elegant fact should protect us from them caring:

Linux- the kernel itself- has no money.

Finally /dev/punchcard works...

[EmbeddedJanitor]

... I am happy to report!

On the flip side of the coin..

[XaXXon]

I just upgraded to 2.5.64 with Linus's patch ( mentioned yesterday) merged in.

I am running Gentoo and I first installed the gentoo-optimized 2.4.20 kernel. When I read the article yesterday I decided to make the jump to 2.5.64 + patch. Holy wow, Batman.

I'm running Gentoo under VMware on a dual 2.2 GHz Xeon (only 1 processor makes it through to the virtual machine, though). After figuring out that I needed new modutils, I had everything up and running. I started up a kernel compile with make -j 2 to really try and saturate the system, and moved the mouse around. The mouse was silky smooth, KDE quickly and properly recognized mouse-overs and everything was just so nice. I then booted back to 2.4.20 and ran the same test. Oh the pain! The mouse was chunky, KDE didn't even try and do mouseover animations.. it was horrible. I've switched grub to default to the 2.5 kernel and I'm not going back.

That said, this is a play machine and does nothing important. So if it crashes more often (no crashes yet), then it doesn't really bother me..

Re:On the flip side of the coin..

[0x0d0a]

hdparm -d1 -u1 [hd devicename] doesn't help?

Re:On the flip side of the coin..

[Hal-9001]

I'm running Gentoo under VMware [vmware.com] on a dual 2.2 GHz Xeon (only 1 processor makes it through to the virtual machine, though)...I started up a kernel compile with make -j 2...

Exactly what is the point of running make -j 2 if VMWare only takes advantage of 1 processor (except maybe for shits and giggles)?

Re:On the flip side of the coin..

[ameoba]

If you've got dual 2.2G Xeons for your 'play machine', what's your main box look like?

Re:On the flip side of the coin..

[craqboy]

well if you read the man page on make you would see that the -j flag is used for number of jobs. Obviously he was trying to load the box down more than doing a normal make.

Re:On the flip side of the coin..

[Anonymous Coward]

...nobody can be told about his main box. They must see it for themselves. :(

Re:On the flip side of the coin..

[Billly Gates]

His main box is all around you. Its in this very room. When you go to work, when you go to church, when you watch television........ its a prison that you can not taste, see or touch.

Re:On the flip side of the coin..

[Hal-9001]

well if you read the man page on make you would see that the -j flag is used for number of jobs. Obviously he was trying to load the box down more than doing a normal make.

Actually, I read the man page, which is why I'm wondering why he would want to do this. Under VMWare his Linux installation can only use one processor, so he can either compile one thing at a time and essentially use 100% of that processor on that one thing, or he can compile two things at a time and use 50% of the processor for each job. Maybe you could benchmark the single-processor multitasking of Linux this way, but in general I don't think you'd ever want to use the -j 2 flag on a single-processor machine since it could only slow down the compile and make your computer less responsive.

Re:On the flip side of the coin..

[ultrabot]

Exactly what is the point of running make -j 2 if VMWare only takes advantage of 1 processor (except maybe for shits and giggles)?

Because it is actually faster than w/o -j 2. I have a single cpu system and use something like -j 8. Compiling with multiple concurrent processes ensures that cpu keeps doing something while blocking on i/o, instead of just waiting. If your system has a lot of ram (>64MB), it can hack it.

Re:On the flip side of the coin..

[Christopher_G_Lewis]

Like this:-)

Re:On the flip side of the coin..

[dylan_-]

but in general I don't think you'd ever want to use the -j 2 flag on a single-processor machine since it could only slow down the compile and make your computer less responsive.

Umm...yeah...if you read the post, that's exactly what he wanted to do: make the computer less responsive so he could see if the new kernel made any difference.

Re:On the flip side of the coin..

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 2000..... ;)

Re:On the flip side of the coin..

[Hal-9001]

Right, but if you're trying to get work done, it's just stupid. Even the best-written software can't compensate for excessive user stupidity. :-p

Re:On the flip side of the coin..

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoot. They just announced "Virutal SMP."

ESX only, but we can hope that they'll bring it to GSX and workstation!

Actually Netcraft states why

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the reason Linux is not on the Netcraft top 10 list is given on their website:

"Additionally HP-UX, Linux, Solaris and recent releases of FreeBSD cycle back to zero after 497 days, exactly as if the machine had been rebooted at that precise point. Thus it is not possible to see a HP-UX, Linux or Solaris system with an uptime measurement above 497 days."

Plus, some of those BSD/OS boxes on that list have been running for like 7 years, which is before Apache was even ported to Linux... crazy

2.0.35, uptime 55 days 12 hours!

[RandySC]

/tmp># uname -a
Linux cephalus 2.0.35 #1 Fri Sep 4 21:58:40 MST 1998 i586 unknown

I use 2.0.35 for my daily internet access and word processing on my Debian machine.

I have a newer kernel (don't remember what, and its been a year or two since I booted it) that I boot if I want my Zip drive to work, but then I lose my printer access and sound (insignificant, because my sound card went in the trash last year when it died). /tmp># uptime
7:03pm up 55 days, 12:27, 3 users, load average: 0.15, 0.29, 0.30

This Pentium 233MMX is so old, I just don't care to put any effort into upgrading hardware or software.

Re:2.0.35, uptime 55 days 12 hours!

[DaveAtFraud]

root@fwupdate2:~/
# uname -a
Linux fwupdate2.vericept.com 2.2.16-22 #1 Tue Aug 22 16:16:55 EDT 2000 i586 unknown
root@fwupdate2:~/
# uptime
10:12pm up 153 days, 14:51, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
root@fwupdate2:~/
# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : CyrixInstead
cpu family : 5
model : 7
model name : Cyrix MediaGXtm MMXtm Enhanced
stepping : 4
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
sep_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu msr cx8 cmov 16 mmx cxmmx
bogomips : 88.27

root@fwupdate2:~/

Re:2.0.35, uptime 55 days 12 hours!

[qazwsx]

he, he. Here is my internal router:

# uname -a
Linux backb02 2.0.34 #1 Fri May 8 16:05:57 EDT 1998 i586 unknown
# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
cpu : 586
model : Pentium 75+
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
stepping : 5
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : yes
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid : yes
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8
bogomips : 30.00

Obs: what the hell. What is this junk characthers slashdot is complaining about?

who needs 2.2?

[jjeffries]

We have a P133 at work routing and doing NAT, er, excuse, me, masquerading, for a wireless (old-school breezecom 802.11 FHSS) link to another building in town. It's running 2.0.38 and has been chugging away for years now without needing any attention.

kernel 2.0 rocks!!11!!

Ahh...the joys of running Solaris

[xenophrak]

I'm not sure what you guys are talking about. Kernel, what kernel. Monolithic kernels are just so tired.

Now, let me just apply patch 108528-666, and I'll be able to turn off the sarcasm. ;)

Seriously though, not having to re-compile or upgrade kernels is sort of nice in the Solaris world. I wish Linus would just admit that modular kernals are just sooo much cooler.

Don't get me started on my HP-UX machines though...

System: You have decided to rmdir a directory, shall I build a new kernel for you.

System: Shall I place it in /stand and corrupt myself?

User: What the hell, I feel like living dangerously

Re:Ahh...the joys of running Solaris

[green pizza]

I hear ya...

We have a couple SGI Indys that do various low-bandwidth server tasks... they do their jobs so well that one almost forgets about 'em. Last I checked both boxes had been up for over 600 days. IRIX 6.5.x quarterly rollups tend to improve performance over time, so it may be worthwhile to update the OS the next time we do a daemon/security update.

I suppose the same can be said for many Linux boxes running kernel 2.0 and 2.2... (though the IRIX kernel updates are move of a gradual evolution from quarter to quarter, moreso than a big step every couple years).

Re:Ahh...the joys of running Solaris

[nbvb]

Be careful with 108528-16! It's got data corruption problems ............

Now 105181-32.... _THAT_'s a stable kernel!

--DM

Me. Still one 2.2.x server and a 2.0.x workstation

[haggar]

both alive and seriously kicking.

For the server, I will have to keep this kernel because the onboard Ethernet port is supported through a patched driver - and the patch I found doesn't apply to any version of the kernel module I checked, so I have to use the compiled module that came with the patch. No, I don't have any info on the origin of the module.

stability ?

[Billly Gates]

Debian still recommends the old 2.2 kernel and you can still install it from their latest distro. It wasn't untill alot of arm twisting before debian even decided to use 2.4 in their latest distro. There are alot of bugs withstanding from 2.4 and 2.2 has matured and all the bugs have been wrinkled out.

The VM bug in Linux doesn't help things either. The new patch in the recent kernels that fixed the problems is not %100 stable either under heavy i/o loads from what I heard.

If I had to use a server I would pick FreeBSD or debian with kernel 2.2 for these reasons.

Does anyone else use the old kernel for these reasons.

My 2.2 box

[iocc]

deja-vu.flashdance.cx is a 2.2.23 box. Its a NAT box for 2 windows computers (my parents and my sisters). MDK 6.1
All servers turned off, no rpm upgrades exist (for security patches) and to compile the servers was to much hassle. And I wasnt really in a need to run servers on it. Now it got 78 days uptime. 1 GB HD, P120, 80 MB RAM.

No need to upgrade it. Rest in peace or something.

Washington University's Robotic Photographer,

[BrodieBruce]

Lewis, which was featured here on /. sometime ago, is still running red hat 6.2. And I don't know of any software upgrades our lab will be giving him any time soon.

stats on boxes out there running 2.2

[BACbKA]

(and on boxes out there running other versions, and on uptimes, etc.) - see the Linux Counter

Caldera Network Desktop

[zoid.com]

I still have a disk of the preview version of Caldera Network Desktop. I really had high hopes for Caldera at this time (it was 94/95). It as a distribution based on the 1.0 kernel and used something called Looking Glass for the window manager. The interesting thing is that it was based on Redhat (4.6 I think). It was the first distro I saw reviewed by a big magazine. Now al I can say is goodbye caldera/sco. I'm glad to see you go....

Re:Caldera Network Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Now all I can say is goodbye Caldera/SCO. I'm glad to see you go...

Ahmen.

Long term support is one feature of the Free Software community that Caldera never picked up on. Everytime they provided a "value add" to their offering the supported period was usually only around a year and was rarely updated. Caldera Look Glass, Caldera Wabi, Caldera WordPerfect 6, Caldera Netsite server, Caldera NetWare and so on--all very limited life and poorly supported products. For some reason these binary only products where ones that Caldera kept contacting us to invest in and each time when we came back a year later for support got nothing. But with Linux kernel v2.2, we got much more confidence that there would still be support a year (or two or three) later. Now under the name of "the SCO group" they are attacking IBM directly and attacking Open Office indirectly via the BSA. Yes, I too will be glad to see them go.

Debian 3.0 Woody

[Malc]

From one of my servers:

~$ uname -r
2.2.18pre21

Re:Debian 3.0 Woody

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad to see Debian finally making some progress. Maybe they will be at 2.4 in 2006?

Re:Debian 3.0 Woody

[Malc]

You're not familiar with Debian, are you? Or do you just enjoy trolling. The most basic peek at Debian's web site reveals that Woody ships with both 2.2 and 2.4. Seeing as the server didn't need any features of 2.4, it seemed more prudent to install the tried and tested 2.2 kernel. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This is why Debian is the most stable and reliable of the Linux distros. For those who want reliability with more modernity, there are other trees than stable available.

keep SW and HW in-sync

[wwwillem]

I have a simple rule. When I have a box of year 19XX, then I try to give it an OS of year 19XX and preferably the applications of year 19XX. (BTW, for the picky ones, same is true for 20XX :-).

The advantage is that you get good performance and that the drivers still understand old hardware like .... (fill in your dots).

So my Advantech 486 / 64MB IPC is still running fine as a firewall / DNS-server, with two ISA-based 3COM 509Cs. And given my rule above, it is of course running a 2.2 kernel, in this case RH 6.2.

My desktop (P5) is running Debian (also 2.2 kernel), but on the other hand my more recent notebook is using RH 8.0 (Linux 2.4).

Performance wise this is all pretty optimal, the only worry that you can have is that those older configurations are not coping with the latest virus attacks. Anyway, so far, so good......

Willem

Re:keep SW and HW in-sync

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, the 2.2 kernel came out WAY after the 486 was outdated. Following your rule, you should be using something like a 1.2 kernel on your 486.

Re:keep SW and HW in-sync

[wwwillem]

Well, there are 486's and 486's. This one is an AMD Am5x86-WB stepping 04, with 66.15 BogoMIPS. It was manufactured in 1998. Don't know the exact birthdate of RH 6.2, but I don't think the two are that far apart. Anyway, when I installed this box last year, that was the oldest RedHat I could find.

Keep hiding AC, Willem

In other news...

[l33t-gu3lph1t3]

A BeOS user was spotted in the wild...

...Microsoft's windows update server logged a user updating Windows 95...

Counterstrike continues to make thousands and thousands of owners of outdated PCs think they have decent machines...

LOL, I guess this does speak for Linux's maintenance outlook...

Scyld Beowulf

[wwwillem]

is still based on RH 6.2. Which could be blamed on lack of resources or attention, but it's probably more an issue of "good enough".

Willem

Re:Scyld Beowulf

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi,

I'm still using Slack 3.9 for personal needs (on a 486).

However, I'm waiting to see Red Hat 8.1 and Slackware 9.0 released. I'm not waiting to see Debian 3.something released just because I don't know in which century will be released.

One more thing:
What do you thing about the currently package managers? Do you like 'em?

I have used RPMs, DEBs and TGZs. Adn well, ... all have dependencies and their own style; i.e: Slackware won't complain about dependencies but if you install Mplayer and type mplayer from a terminal it'll say that doesn't find blahblah.so
DEBs about the same. Error: dependencies failed.
I've got a i810 chipset and I can't use Debian just because it's so old-dated. Red Hat and Slackware are more updated.
For the enterprise, small business... Red Hat and Slackware are better IMHO.
Therefore, I prefer RPMs and TGZs.
For those willing to become a network and system administrator they should choose Red Hat mainly. Slackware in second place and third place is for Debian. Don't choose Mandrake, Lindows, Xandros, etc. Use pure Linux such as Slack, RedHat, Debian ,...

Peace

n0dez
==
www.n0dez.com

Re:Scyld Beowulf

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat rules! Slackware too! Debian is full of communism! I'm not a f*cking nazi or something, I'm just a capitalist as many of you whoe like to eat McDonald's hamburgers and drink Pepsi.

I still run 2.2 at work.

[delld]

I have 2.2.18 installed on my AMD K6 400 machine at work. I never upgraded, well, because, I did not have the time, and if IT did the upgrade I would loose root. Fortunately, they now permit remote logged sudo, which means I could upgrade to what ever latest RedHat image they have. Or I could also choose NetBSD. That said, I am in no rush, as all the machine ever runs is X, xmms, rxvt and vim. Sometimes mozilla. All the real work is done on the big hardware. Why spend the man's money (no not that man's money) when I don't have to?

IP Masqerade support

[pruneau]

Ok, Know you classic, go there, and read: "2.6. Requirements for IP Masquerade on Linux 2.4.x"

You'll see that masquerading for some protocols are not ported to iptables

Of course, some purist will tell you that IP masquerading is not security, but other purist will tell you that statefull packet inspection is not kosher eather.

Who is a purist anyway ?

Re:bullshit

[benevold]

I suppose you haven't used debian then...
Sure it doesn't show the correct uptime, just add 497.
Monitoring software (netsaint now nagos) reports zombie processes but the machine is still running fine, no problems with apache and we aren't running named on this one.

Yggdrasil

[rice_burners_suck]

What I'd like to know is - who else (besides me) out there still has machines running 2.2 and intends to keep it that way?

2.2, eh? That's high tech stuff. I have an old machine in my garage, a 486 SX, running an old Yggdrasil Linux from at least 10 years ago. I don't remember what the kernel version is, but it's OLD. Still running. I use it for text editing and a few other boring things.

And hey, it's COOL! It reminds me of the early days of Linux, when most of my friends had never heard of it and were still using DOS and Windows 3.1. Hell, one guy had Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, and he had all these bitchen games on his dad's 486 DX4--100 mhz--and he was COOL! Nowadays, that's not fast enough to run an operating system, let alone any games.

Re:Yggdrasil

[rice_burners_suck]

...he had all these bitchen games on his dad's 486 DX4...

Yeah... Those were the good ol' days when everybody's DAD had the faster/cooler computer, because everyone basically got their dad's old computer when he replaced it with a better, faster one. Nowadays, I think it's the other way around. The kids are the ones with the faster computers, and the parents get to use them sometimes.

Re:Yggdrasil

[Anonymous Coward]

Blend one part each: Bailey's, Kahlua, vanilla ice cream. Drink responsibly.

Sounds like a good way to get diabetes. What's wrong with a bottle of goose and some ice?

must be...

[Anonymous Coward]

dung...

you know

MS.

ooh...mod me up, i put down Billy!! ;oP

Re:must be...

[Scoria]

+1, Hilarious!

I'll see your 2.5.64 and raise you a XFree86 4.3.0

[DaveAtFraud]

Ah, but are you runing 2.5.64 with XFree86 4.3.0 like me? And, yeah, its on a dualie Athlon box.

[root@bend mail]# uname -a
Linux bend.local.davenjudy.org 2.5.64 #1 SMP Thu Mar 6 16:42:57 MST 2003 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

and

[root@bend mail]# head /var/log/XFree86.0.log

XFree86 Version 4.3.0
Release Date: 27 February 2003
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0, Release 6.6
Build Operating System: Linux 2.5.61 i686 [ELF]
Build Date: 04 March 2003

Debian uses 2.4!

[laptop006]

Debian stable is VERSION 3.0r1, and depending on the arch the default kernel is either a 2.2 or 2.4, (most of the new arch's are 2.4 only [hppa], and some older ones have issues with 2.4). Off hand you can get 2.4 install disks for everything bar sparc32.

Possibly Redundant...

[Urchlay]

I'll just chime in...

I've got a perfectly good Pentium-90 firewall/NAT box running Slackware 7.0 with kernel 2.2.13. It's been in use for a long time as-is (the kernel image itself is dated 04-10-2000), and runs sshd, but no other services (well, a fake identd, which is a 3-line perl hack, but the identd port's limited to the IP addresses of a few IRC servers, and nothing else).

I have had to upgrade openssh and openssl a few times, but otherwise I don't worry about that box.

One day I will replace it with something a little faster, and probably running Net or Open BSD, but there's no hurry.

Trivia: In the kernel config, to this day, you still see a `bugfix for CMD640 IDE chipset'.. my old P90 router actually has a CMD640 in it. However, it has only a single SCSI drive, plugged into the onboard (really!) SCSI controller. It's actually a pretty high-end board for its time period: Intel NX chipset, dual CPU support up to Pentium 120 (or maybe 133?), onboard NIC (not functional in Linux 2.2 though) and SCSI. I've got 80M of SIMMs in there; it would take up to 256M (8 slots @ 32M apiece. I don't believe it supports 64M SIMMs).

The last time I installed any new software on that box was in maybe 2001, when I wanted to temporarily run a QuakeWorld server on it. QuakeForge wouldn't compile with the ancient gcc on there (2.91.66), so I built a 100% static binary on my workstation & scp'ed it over. Ran like a champ for the 4 hours or so we played that day, but I wouldn't keep it up 24/7.

Why don't I upgrade it to Linux 2.4? A better question is why should I? I pulled this box out of a dumpster behind Revco (heh, the BIOS boot screen has a Revco logo on it, too) in 1996 or so, ran a 2.0 kernel on it for a while, upgraded to 2.2 + Slack 7 around the time Slack 7 came out... then got a `real job' and started making enough money I didn't need to use a piece of dumpster crap for a workstation any more, so pressed it into service as a router when I got cable for the first time. It Just Works, and it's likely to keep on Just Working long after my Athlon 2100+ workstation has died the death.

Basically, it's an appliance now. Power it on, and you have a noisier but more secure version of one of those dinky little Linksys routers people are buying now.

if running 2.2 is conservative.....

[the_2nd_coming]

then running 2.0 must be frigen right wing reactionary.

Got no reason to update - YET.

[meyeaard]

I've got a 2.2.19 GNU/Linux Linuxfromscratch.org setup. It is behind my firewall so I'm not that worried about security. It runs my internal Bind 9 DNS, ISC DHCPD, Samba 2.2.7a, and software RAID which was a pain to setup!

When I go away from my Compaq rackmount 25GB (pitiful I know) RAID chasis full of old 4.3GB disks and go to large IDE drives, then I might rebuild to 2.4.

Incidentally the firewall runs 2.4.20, SQUID transparent chaching, and SSH - that's all folks.

Speed?

[GiMP]

I remember that when upgrading my pentium 133 from 2.0.x to 2.2.x, I noticed what seemed to be a big drop in performance (or at least an increase in latency). Now the machine runs 2.4.0.

Many features of the kernel (and of Xfree86, for that matter) are really nice for the embedded and slower-computer markets; however, how do these newer versions perform vs the old versions?

Are there any benchmarks that compare Linux 2.0, 2.2, and 2.4 across several older-generation machines? What about XFree86?

Better virtual memory management

[dsfd]

According to my personal experience with 2.2, if you do a lot of small memory allocations and bring the machine very close to the limit (including swap space), the system will eventually stop working, perhaps not crashing, but not responding to rsh/telnet.

I remember that I even wrote a small C code to reproduce the problem. In summary: Alloc M bytes of RAM. If they are available, ask for M more. If not, ask for M/2, M/4 ... Repeat that until even 1 byte is not available. Store all the pointers and, between mallocs, access to all the memory correctly allocated before.

The problem disapeared with 2.4. This holds at least for the old versions of 2.2 we used, I don't know if it has been fixed.

Re:Better virtual memory management

[fdisk3hs]

I had a P100 laptop running Slackware 7.1 with the latest 2.2 kernel. It swapped hard most of the time with the 24mb ram...

I compiled a 2.4 and it performed much better, or at least stayed responsive under heavy loads...

Never could get emacs with the W3C web browser add-on going, though. It just swallowed the poor machine whole. It would swap for two years before responding to mouse input...

LR

Our compute servers had to switch to 2.4...

[Boone^]

due to a vendor's application dependability. One of our main apps switched to 2.4 on us, but other than that we'd have stayed put at 2.2.

kernel 2.0

[mog]

I recently deployed a new dial-up server at my work using Slink Debian, kernel 2.0.38. The machine is a 100Mhz 486 with 8MB of RAM. It's deliriously stable, and runs all the software we need on it (mgetty, atftpd, cron, and some sh scripts). Why would I go for a kernel that requires more memory (Debian 2.2+ wouldn't boot in 8MB of RAM), when the tried and true works great?

2.2 vs 2.4

[tuuw]

I have two RH 6.2 based boxen. One is an old P133 running 2.2.22, setup as a firewall/router. This system is rock solid, uptimes are generally 90 days plus.

The other box is a P166 set up as a security camera server. Its been upgraded to 2.4.20. for better bttv support. It manages around 14 days between reboots.

Not really a fair comparision since the two systems are doing very different things but the 2.2 kernels do seem to be a little more stable

Re:2.2 vs 2.4

[NerveGas]

Wow. 14 days between reboots? 90-day uptimes? Might I respectfully suggest that something on your systems sounds entirely broken?

Out of a pool of about 12 heavily-loaded servers that have been running for 4 years on 2.2 and 2.4 kernels, so far, I have had exactly *one* need to reboot that couldn't be positively traced to hardware problems. And that time I'm not entirely sure that it wasn't hardware-related, I just couldn't *prove* it.

The couple of times there have been hardware problems have been because of things like failed RAID cards or power supplies. I could count the number of incidents on one hand, and have at least one hand left over. A couple of the machines, in the 3 or 4 years they've been in service, have only been rebooted to switch colo facilities (twice) and for batched kernel+critical software (libc) upgrades (two or three times).

The last time I switched colocation facilities, *ALL* of the machines had been running for over a year. The thought of rebooting them never crossed my mind. And while some of them were very robust systems (triple-redundant power supplies, etc.), most of them were plain old commodity machines that I slapped together on my desk.

If you're really having to reboot those machines like that, you probably want to dig deeper and find out what the problems are. Chances are it's not just that one kernel version is more stable than another, it's that one kernel version doesn't exacerbate underlying, pre-existing problems as much as another.

steve

Re:2.2 vs 2.4

[NullProg]

The other box is a P166 set up as a security camera server. Its been upgraded to 2.4.20. for better bttv support. It manages around 14 days between reboots.

Strange. The only problem we have had with the 2.4.x kernel is an iomem conflict between certain device subsystems (hard reset). Once configured properly everything just runs.

You need to investigate this further. Are you getting weird log messages? How about a missing/older library dependency?

Just trying to help, enjoy.

2.0.36, baybee...

[alienmole]

2.1? That's a bit cutting-edge for me. I'm still running a server with 2.0.36, circa '98. Works great as a mail & web server, serving a handful of friends and colleagues, on a zippy Pentium 90MHz. Runs an active mailing list with about 90 members.

Security? Aside from all the patches I've installed over the years, the script kiddies have forgotten how to hack into a box that old.

I figure I'll upgrade it when its hard disk or power supply dies.

2.0.36

[michael_cain]

Much as I hate to admit it, the household server is still running 2.0.36. IP masquerade and firewall for the household LAN's Internet access via cable modem, Samba print service for the other machines, backup storage for kids' schoolwork, and an antique version of Apache whose main function is to provide access to the Perl scripts that allow multiple people to share an old SCSI scanner. Haven't had a monitor connected to it for years, and the BIOS is old enough that you can tell it to ignore the fact that the keyboard check fails at boot time. The old AT power supply comes back up without any manual action after a power failure -- no idea how many of those it's been through, but the ext2 file system doesn't seem to have ever lost anything.

Two servers running strong!

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at an ISP and I still have to servers running RH 6.2. They've done quite well for the past 2 years. But they are due for an hardware upgrade to Sun 220R so... I could stay with 6.2 or just go with Solaris 8. And since I'm a Solaris Admin, it's a no brainer.

Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not use 2.2 if it is necessary or just the same. Since 2.2.19 (or 18) there's USB support, embedded applications are definitely benefited by its small size in binary and in generally most features for a simple machine are there.

On the contrary, 2.4 has much better support for most recent machines therefore its use is obligatory for anything new apart from the embedded machines and special purpose macines as firewalls.

Then again, if a machine old enough can handle the largest binary, it only get 2 megs of RAM more anyway, it is better to use 2.4, not for the features but for the optimizations it has on it since 2.3 was started.

Same will happen with 2.6. It's not a philosophy, it's common sense. Remember that yesterday's article here about the recent optimizations of Linus on the scheduler. The fact is it's not only these optimizations people were talking about, Ingo has re-written from scratch the scheduler for the 2.5.

In general, if the machine can handle the slightly larger binaries and slightly higher memory needs, it's a sane solution to use the latest *stable* release.

People often

how about sun4m smp?

[walkah]

Linux cantor 2.2.20 #1 SMP Fri Nov 16 16:15:32 EST 2001 sparc unknown

cpu : Texas Instruments, Inc. - SuperSparc 50
Cpu0Bogo : 74.75
Cpu1Bogo : 74.95

i haven't had much luck yet with 2.4.x ... although some people on debian-sparc claim it works... i'll probably stick with 2.2.20 for a while on this box.

Kentucky Fried Linux.

[infonography]

ouh ouh, I gotta patent that idea. Thanks AC, if your name was here I would thank you in person. But since your nobody I get to walk all over your rights. ;)

I am sure it would be a Plucky little distro. We could showcase it at a Birds of a Feather meeting in Silicon Valley.

I could relabel the various bits of the OS, Call the whole system 'The Sky' as in 'the skies the limit'and if there was any problems a little yellow baby chicken graphical agent ala Clippy we'll call Chicken Little will run about the screen yelling 'The Sky is Falling! The Sky is Falling!" If you chase him with your mouse and can click on him he won't reboot your system. Kind of like what would happen if you were using a windows box.

If not I could sell it to Jeff Bezo. He could call it One Cluck computing.

Certainly not me...

[NerveGas]

who else (besides me) out there still has machines running 2.2 and intends to keep it that way?"

Certainly not me. All of my machines are SMP machines, and 2.4 with the o(1) scheduler lets me get much more out of the hardware. I was very excited when I decided that the combination (2.4+o(1)) was stable enough, and upgraded my main database server (4 CPU's) from a 2.2 kernel. System loads dropped by around 15% or 20%. That may not sound like much on the surface, but when you consider the cost of upgrading the hardware at that level, it's a HUGE bonus.

steve

LRP - LEAF

[MCZapf]

Though the Linux Router Project (LRP) is somewhat stalled, a lot of the work seems to have moved to the Linux Embedded Appliance Firewall (LEAF).

I used to use LRP on my router. Using such a stripped-down system was a great way to learn things. But eventually I switched to a minimal Debian install (once I got a hard drive for that old box).

Re:LRP - LEAF

[Anonymous Coward]

"Though the Linux Router Project (LRP) is somewhat stalled..."

An abandoned linux project? You have GOT to be kidding.

i still have...

[XO]

...a machine running 2.0.38. It's primarily a router, though it also runs mailserver and web server. It's a 486sx/25. In fact, it was once called a Tandy Sensation. Still has it's original 270mb or thereabouts hard drive, it's sound board (though nothing has been plugged into it for speakers for years) .. cranked it from 4MB RAM to 40MB RAM, threw in a pair of Ethernet cards, and it's been happy ever since. It actually has Linux and OS/2 installed on it.. Linux boots from floppy, OS/2 from the hard drive.. OS/2 is also configured with some software to act as a router....

it probably gets very hot/cold up there

[PW2]

cause:
>> "...even though its up in my attic!"

effect:
>> "I think it's close to death now"

2.2 forever..

[PeekabooCaribou]

cd /usr/src/linux
perl -i -e 's/^PATCHLEVEL = 4$/PATCHLEVEL = 2/' Makefile

All the benefits of 2.4, with the beautiful, symmetric numbering of 2.2.

Re:I'll see your 2.5.64 and raise you a XFree86 4.

[addaon]

Um, what's your source for your sig quote? Since it seems very much not like something Franklin would say... or anything from his century. "Pursuit" as in pursuit of happiness did not imply the chase, but rather the occupation... like the pursuit of stamp collecting or lock picking.

NBD!

[fuzza]

I use NBD (network block device) combined with software RAID1 to give automatic mirroring of data across 2 machines.

Unfortunately NBD in 2.4 simply _doesn't work_ - the client (with the nbd.o module) dies as soon as you try to transfer any significant amount of data (~4Kb). How it could have made it all the way to the stable kernel is beyond me, even with 2.4's reputation.

I've tried unapplying the NBD sections of each relevant patch since 2.2, (all of 2.4 and 2.3 series) to see where it broke, without much luck so far. I've worked out that the current behaviour has existed since 2.4.4. I got all the way back to 2.3.46, prior to which (haven't tried any earlier yet) it doesn't compile properly.

In short, yucky. So much for our backup solution on a RH6.2->RH8.0 upgrade...

33mhz laptops...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am running a 486 sx33 that will basically only run 2.0. why on earth would I want to upgrade it? It runs vi, minicom, and gcc in about 40MB of hdd space. I couldn't even get a 2.2 to boot on this thing =)
Just using it to test new digital circuits.. an old-school laptop can still drive TTL in and out of the parallel port and act as a digital scope well enough.. even had it running dos and djgpp+rhide a while back.
Seriously, why upgrade when you consider all the headaches involved with dependencies.. My workstation is still on 2.2.18, although with 6 compilers and libraries installed, it is getting very close to reinstall time.

-Slackware junkie since '95.

Debian

[md17]

Does this mean that Debian will switch to the 2.2 kernel within the next 3 years?

Of-course I am just kidding... But on a serious note, give Gentoo a try. They get the new kernels into portage before the post is made on Fresh^H^H^H^H^HSlashdot.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

It's chock full of interesting and insightful content!

But...

[PleaseDontBeTaken]

Go with debian and apt-get or dpkg your way back to sanity. Yes, you have to get the oo.org package from the vpnjunkies.de site, but if you are really, really paranoid (or have to be), then you should be compiling it yourself, anyway.

I started with SuSE, was mad I couldn't get openoffice or the wireless drivers or kernel I wanted, but then found debian. Debian's upgrade and package install, _especially_ the kernel, are just so good that I don't ever expect to switch. If the system setup wasn't so painful, everyone who doesn't need a Rhat service contract ought to use it.

Re:But...

[brad-x]

I'd consider Debian a practical choice as soon as they pared down their efforts a little.

The fact that they're unable to come up with binary packages that aren't more recent than 24 months in their stable branch is indicative of some massive release engineering issues.

This doesn't even begin to go into the fact that Debian's stable branch is not dynamic. Large projects like KDE 3.1 will never officially be placed in stable, even if the developer base manages to 'fix every problem' on each and every CPU architecture they support, like the purists that they are.

And no, Debian unstable is not an option. Some of us like to run workstations without fearing breakage.

The sad thing is, on slashdot, I'm outnumbered by a legion of Debian users who, as they read this, will shake their heads and say "man, what is he talking about?"

Just sharing some of the opinions from the real world.

Re:But...

[gilesjuk]

You can install apt4rpm with Red Hat anyway, gives you apt-get and lets you get any updates without a subscription to RHN.

Re:I'll see your 2.5.64 and raise you a XFree86 4.

[DaveAtFraud]

Should be sufficient. I've had a couple of quotes questioned so I've been picking on this site to make sure I have them correct.

Enjoy, if you like quotes.

Why 2.2?!?

[Netmonger]

Is there any good reason to run 2.2 over 2.4?

Software RAID

[ic3p1ck]

I'm still running 2.2 because I'm afraid what will happen to the software RAID support in a newer version. I have patched in the raidtools kernel patches, but still - its risky.

The only real advantage to running a newer kernel would be improved large file support. Currently 2.2 supports max 2GB files, which for a file server is a bit limiting (for example digital video captures from DV can be any size on NTFS/Win2K/XP).

You know...

[Anonymous Coward]

you could just build and install bochs, and install Mandrake 9.0 into your userland virtual X86 environment. :)

At-least you will gain better NE2000 support and better SoundBlaster 16 support :)

Ha ha!

Re:You know...

[B3ryllium]

Hmm ... I'm using an NE2000 NIC ... stupid idea for a server, sure, but I'm *way* strapped for cash :) Seems to work fine.

This one's for you, anti-BSD trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

It is official; Netcraft confirms: Linux is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Linux community when IDC confirmed that Linux market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Linux has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Linux is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Linux's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Linux faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Linux because Linux is dying. Things are looking very bad for Linux. As many of us are already aware, Linux continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Redhat is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Redhat developers Michael Evans and Timothy Buckley only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Redhat is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Mandrake leader Jacques states that there are 7000 users of Mandrake. How many users of Slackware are there? Let's see. The number of Mandrake versus Slackware posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Slackware users. SuSE posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Slackware posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of SuSE. A recent article put Debian at about 80 percent of the Linux market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Debian users. This is consistent with the number of Debian Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, Mandrake went out of business and was taken over by Redhat who sell another troubled OS. Now Redhat is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Linux has steadily declined in market share. Linux is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Linux is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. Linux continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Linux is dead.

Fact: Linux is dying

2.2 is an honest and good kernel

[Anonymous Coward]

The features being thrown into 2.4 and 2.5/2.6 are just improvments that make desktop operation of the multi-user environment for a single-user to have absolute attention regardless of nice().

2.2 is a fast, stable, and 100% cross-platform kernel. I just purchased Debian 3.0 for my Alpha 164UX system and it is *fast*. I am more greatful that all the processes on the system are receiving fair attention, despite the apparent lag in X and the Window Manager which is not my concern as everything is fairly multi-tasking without problems. What I do think must be improved is the Virtual Memory *question*. Why is VM being updated/revised/changed so much? Why can't it be a Virtual Memory system instead of a mass hysteria to fudge up a bad(TM) peice of software that tries to and fails to swap memory logically?

I keep in my mind that a Unix environment is meant to be multi-task and multi-user. Given that *many* systems are only running one X and WindowManager session with 1 local user, giving priority to interactive processes appears to be a good thing(TM) to most people, but they are forgetting that there are some of us with multiple users at a local machine with multiple X and Window Manager sessions and this new temporary priority grant to the interactive processes of a 2.5/2.6 -based linux kernel may have strange side effects at multi-local-user systems.

Think of the implications of multiple users at a computer. Why waste all that processing power in an Athlon or Pentium 4 system? Throw in a couple more videocards, plug in a couple more mice+keyboards+monitors, and spawn some more X servers and desktop environments for a simple solution to a large business that requires computers for wordprocessing. Mainframes were around for the same reason, this time the performance is in the same box as the client.

Linux 2.2.x is a good thing(TM), especially since 2.4.x and 2.6.x are breaking support for non-X86 computer platforms. Can you imagine somone with a HewlettPackard AlphaServer ES45 (fastest in the world) only being able to stabily run on a Linux 2.2.x kernel? To my knowledge, 2.4 will work ok with minor issues, yet 2.2.x is still golden. :)

Re:Why 2.2? (going OT)

[Osty]

Hey, check out RennList [rennlist.com] for an active community of Porsche owners.

Already know about it. Being that my Porsche is a "Porsche with panties" as Ralphie Ciffaretto so eloquently called it on The Sopranos (why do you think they whacked him, eh?), I tend to hang out at Porsche Pete's Boxster Board more often (I post as "Todd in Seattle" on occassion).

If it ain't broke...

[Anonymous Coward]

...don't fix it.

2.2????

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still using 2.0.36.... sheeeesh!

because 2.4 isn't stable yet

[acidrain69]

Because until recently, I couldn't find a patch for SMP on alpha machines. Since my server is a dual alpha, I can't go 2.4. In the last 2 months or so I managed to find a patch to fix the SMP issues (still isn't in the main kernel tree). I'm STILL having major pains getting 2.4 to work, this time it is problems with the raid5 module. It complains about a lack of some xor.o module, and I can't find that anywhere. Not going to switch unless I can get to my raid5 volumes.

In conclusion, platform support aside from x86 isn't that great.

As for my x86 machine, it works fine NOW, but back around 2.4.13 or so it was having problems with crashes.

I've just had SO much more luck with 2.2

Don't forget

[acidrain69]

the 2.4 kernel CRASHES. Sorry, I'm bitter. It doesn't work well on my Alpha box. Too much focus on x86. Someone else has problems on a Max Performa.

Oh, and are you STARK RAVING LOONY? "Grandma, go recompile your kernel, you need support for vfat and the EMU10K1, make it all modularized, and don't forget the patches" Grandma: "You lost me at recompile"

Whatever. Recompiling a kernel, while simple to someone with a basic understanding of compilers, isn't what I consider "basics of maintaining these systems". Grandma wants email. Grandma may want some web access. Grandma doesn't care about O(1) schedulers or other nifty features of 2.4

Re:Don't forget

[batobin]

But what about recompiling/updating for bug fixes and for hardware support (USB cameras, printers, etc. have been mentioned earlier)?

I realize she doesn't need / shouldn't need what you mentioned. But kernel updates aren't just for us techies.

Re:Why 2.2? (going OT)

[Anonymous Coward]

Porsches are like iMacs. It looks purdy, but it runs like shit on the road.

2.4 bugs

[Anonymous Coward]

i have an older PCI video card in an Athlon server. 2.2 kernels can talk to it just fine, but when i boot 2.4, the console goes all wacky -- characters aren't displayed, even though the cursor moves around.

i ended up replacing the card when a friend returned one i forgot i'd lent him. but in general, i think that 2.4 isn't well-tested on pre-2000 hardware & probably never will be.

the only reason i want 2.4 is for LVM, and i could get it in 2.2 if i was less lazy. the linux kernel team should be very careful to avoid the mistake made by so many other developers of mature pieces of software, and know when to call it finished.

Why stick with 2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats wrong with 2.4?

mwahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

crowley:~$ uname -a
Linux linux 1.0.9 #4 Sun Mar 09 23:19:51 PST 2003 i486

RH 6.2 end-of-life date?

[thlayli]

"Time to give our old RH 6.2 machines one last kernel-recompile before Red Hat's end-of-life date arrives for 6.2?"

I don't see what this kernel thing has to do with the e-o-l date of RH 6.2 ? I've been running 2.4.x kernels in my RH 6.2 box for at least a year and a half. RH 6.2 (or it's derivate Trustix 1.5) is still my favourite distro and I'm not going to give it up anytime soon! :)

Several machines

[fearlezz]

"If it ain't broken, don't fix it." I have several machines running 2.2.x. Simple routers, mail servers and stuff. And they'll be running 2.2.x until a upgrade is really needed or a big security leak is found in the old kernel.

Why do we make such a big thing out of upgrading?

[Dthoma]

When kernel 2.6 comes out, no doubt we'll all cootchy-coo over it and quite a number of us will run to download it simply because it has a lot of improvements and because it's the most functional kernel. And yet in four, five or six years' time those same people would probably recoil in horror if they found out that someone is "still" using 2.6 because "everyone knows" that some newer kernel is "so much better".

If something works now, why won't it work in a few years time with the same hardware? If stability is important to you, isn't it better to stick to something tried and tested?

Don't upgrade to 2.4!

[Arandir]

Don't upgrade to 2.4! If you do, then Linux will never beat FreeBSD in the uptime department!

Re:Don't upgrade to 2.4!

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Linux isn't even on the list. Chew on that, "BSD is dying" fellows, and have the Solaris and Win2k entries for dessert.

quite happy with 2.2.x for a dedicated server

[yahkah]

I run 2.2.18 on an ancient sparcstation used as a small traffic web and cvs server. It just passed its 397th day of uptime.

Debian 2.2

[shadowxtc]

I've been using Debian 2.2 with the 2.2 kernel since it was released. I have only rebooted the box twice since then, when I've had to move the machine. I highly doubt I'll upgrade it for years to come... If I actually used it for anything other than network services, maybe I'd keep it more up to date.

Re:Why 2.2? (going OT)

[Osty]

Porsches are like iMacs. It looks purdy, but it runs like shit on the road.

Only if you're into drag racing. (Street racing and stoplight dragging is simply stupid.) On the track, while most Porsches may not be able to hang on with higher horsepower cars in the straights, they'll blow away almost anything on the curves. Since races are won in the curves, draw your own conclusions ...

Linux Counter kernel stats

[hta]

From the Linux Counter:

Kernel Count Percentage

2.0 34 1.0%
2.2 549 15.6%
2.4 2927 82.9%
2.5 16 0.5%
Others 0.1%


No, it's not dead yet.

No reboot = no upgrade.

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer not to reboot my server, so no I won't update it any time soon.

We need a feature in the kernel so we can upgrade it without rebooting :-)

RAMdisk!!

[llzackll]

Easy solution, Get a little more RAM, and put in a CD-ROM drive. Store your linux distro on a CD. Have it boot from the floppy, and copy the CD to the RAMdisk. Still no moving parts except the fans, because the CD-ROM only needs to be used once every boot-up, aka every 2 years.

Re:RAMdisk!!

[jonadab]

> Easy solution, Get a little more RAM

You ever try to buy RAM for an eight-year-old Compaq? You know,
the kind that stores its BIOS stuff on the hard drive and predates
things like PCI and (more pertinently) SDRAM?

The easiest way would be to buy a lot of two dozen such systems
on eBay for roughly the cost of shipping and hope one or two of
them might have compatible RAM, attempt to figure out which if
any do by trial and error, then use them all as geeky decorations
or bookends or stepstools or something.

486s are even *worse* to buy RAM for; some of them use pre-EDO
types of RAM, which are about as easy to work with as vacuum
tubes, and the motherboards are about as well-documented as
obfuscated code competition entries. Oh, and they usually max
out at a whole lot less RAM than you'd need to copy the contents
of a CD-ROM.

Re:RAMdisk!!

[arkane1234]

It's a 486...
putting 128megs in that thing is impossible, much less greater than 640mb...

It currently has less than 32 megs.. I can't remember the exact amount, I think it is 24 megs. And all of the slots are full.

Might be a good idea for something Pentium related, that has the ability to pop in over 512mb of ram.

Mainstream dist kernel.

[Anonymous Coward]

Never upgrade your kernel that came with your dist at the first place, what will you do with that RaidCard with noopensource modules when you update your kernel? Same thing goes on your desktop, you happen to have a special GFX card or network card? You stuck with the old kernel, Im sorry

Home server

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not like I am showing off (or running 2.2 or anything) BUT,

[root@server root]# uptime
3:24am up 124 days, 17:38, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
[root@server root]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 1008M 108M 849M 12% /
/dev/hda1 31M 9.9M 19M 34% /boot
/dev/hda6 5.6G 3.1G 2.2G 58% /usr
/dev/hda7 496M 113M 357M 24% /var
/dev/hda8 496M 8.1M 462M 2% /tmp
/dev/hda5 20G 8.6G 11G 44% /home
/dev/md0 147G 115G 32G 78% /mnt/md0
/dev/md1 300G 107G 194G 36% /mnt/md1
[root@server root]#

Look on Kazaa for my Mp3Z and MovieZ collection!

Bridging firewalls!

[Krellan]

I run a 2.2 kernel, with the patch for Ethernet bridging and firewalling.

http://bridge.sourceforge.net/


http://www.math.leidenuniv.nl/mailman/listinfo/bri dge


It seems that the new firewalling technique of 2.4 (iptables) does not play well with Ethernet bridges.

I have a DSL connection to a small subnet of static IP addresses (/29). The problem is that the DSL uplink, out of my control and unfirewalled, is on one of the addresses in my subnet! It's as if there is a fox in the henhouse.

There is no proper routing subnet, as there should be. This is no doubt because of the IP address shortage. The DSL uplink must exist on the same subnet as my machines, giving me only 5 usable addresses for my machines. Broadcasts must be passed correctly, or the machines won't be able to ARP each other. Proxy ARP is not an option, because of the need to keep the DSL uplink on the same subnet.

So, I run Ethernet bridging with firewalling. I bridge two Ethernet cards together, passing broadcast packets between them (filtering out externally generated "smurf" broadcast packets, of course). I also implement my firewall at this point. The network is one logical LAN, but partitioned into two physical LAN's, with the firewall machine in between them. The firewall makes sure that unwanted packets from the DSL uplink never reach my machines.

It's not perfect (there is no stateful connection filtering), but it has worked well for me. Probes come in at least every hour, and no successful breakins to my knowledge.

And another reason not to upgrade? The machine's uptime is now at 326 days, I'm going for the year :)

Old VMWare license

[karlm]

I dual boot 2.2 and 2.4 kernels. My Fuji FinePix digital camera and IBM USB keyboard appear to not interface with kernels in the 2.2 series. (I'm the only person I know to run dual keyboards.) However, I bought a VMWare 2.x license and don't want to shell out $300 for the latest VMWare version until there's a version that supports the Linux 2.6 kernels. I've so far resisted the temptation to grab a VMWare keygen or cracked version.

2.2

[zirdox]

Well I still use on my small portable 486 acer machine. Because the new redhat's demand more machine power I use 6.2.

2.2? Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

[neuroxmurf]

Hell, my main server at home still runs 2.0.36 and probably always will. My servers at work run the latest 2.2.

I've had nothing but bad luck with 2.4 from a performance and stability standpoint and pretty much the only thing it gains is USB support. Guess what? I don't use USB on servers. Nor will I ever.

you mean you don't know?

[waspleg]

upgrading your kernel is the linux equivalent of the lawn mower wars your dad (and probably many of you) have with your neighbor, whereby your neighbor's grass may not be shorter than yours and requires that people mow constantly so as to appear better.. although i haven't figuresd that one out yet myself. put simply it's all about "being the first kid on your block" with it.. in my experience it's mostly been used to flaunt your aptitude to either be first (first post) for the associated bragging rights (is it a right though?) and penis size correlation there of (first = bigger).

2.0.35, Baby!

[vogon jeltz]

What do you mean, 2.2? Seriously, the "server" in my parents not-so-small medical cabinet connects to 5 serial terminals and a couple of printers and card readers. I set it up in 1998 (downgrading from SCO ;-) and it's been running ever since, litterally 24x365. Not one single crash. It runs 2.0.35.

Re:Why 2.2? (going OT)

[Anonymous Coward]

You talk about yourself way too much. Seriously, it's not healthy.

2.4 IDE drivers not reliable

[PeteVine]

I'm sticking to 2.2 on my server because it's a celeron 333@416 and the 2.4 IDE drivers cause almost instant corruption of the filesystem due to overclocking of the PCI bus whereas 2.2 don't. I've patched the kernel to use reiserfs for squid and that's all I need.

Re:Why do we make such a big thing out of upgradin

[TeknoHog]

It depends on what you want. When 2.6 comes out, I'll probably upgrade my music workstation but leave my server as it is.

hmm, looks like a problem

[Linwood]

everyone on here will pledge to the death OpenSource is better, but when they finaly make a new kernel, boy does everyone jump out of the way! then you hear the 'if it aint broke . dont fix it' from 75% of the users, funny stuff.. OpenSource is great, but when the projects forked into a million distros and you dont even know if you can download the main piece of gear for your OpSys because maybe , somewhere in that mess, someone has a kenerl version check or something.. maybe someone will fix the mess one day and we can all use linux :D an avid BeOS user

Re: A 486 is perfectly fine

[Billly Gates]

Infact a 486 is overkill for a home based router. Its inet, xinit and other utilities that are highly bloated for a 486 which make it a little slugish. Try the linux router project. Its very tiny and designed for old systems to make them routers only. Infact it can run even without a hard drive! All you need is a floppy to load it and then forget it.

Speaking of old hardware I remember trying out Linux in 98 when I came to a Linux powered website powered by a 100mhz 486! No you did not misread that.

The webpage designer mentioned that his website gets thousands of hits a week and transfers gigs of traffic! Besides using the 486 to serve webpages the author benchmarked it with apache and the linux 2.0 kernel with a pentiumpro running IIS.

The linux 486 machine creamed the IIS pentiumpro by a significant margin. I believe both systems only had 48 megs of ram so that might of been the bottleneck on NT. Ram was alot more expensive and NT + IIS was a beast. NT back then typically ate more then half of a systems ram. I think he also was playing with perl apache modules to make the linux box faster. I do not remember for sure. Perl could not be loaded as an isapi app back then and they could only use cgi on IIS. My last statement is just speculation of course but I can otherwise explain why apache creamed it.

Keep in mind many older cisco routers use old motorola 68030 processors which barely have 386 level speeds. The internet backbone used these for years and they can transfer enormous amounts of data. They do not need to run quake3 or compile Mozilla. They are fine at what they do.

Re: A 486 is perfectly fine

[Billly Gates]

Hmm it looks like the linux router project is outdated and maybe dieing. Take a look at this instead.

Its a cd based distro that has options to use it as a firewall exclusively. If you find it too bloated you can always use netbsd or freebsd which are tiny and use less memory for your 486.

Still got one

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian 3.0 still comes with a 2.2 kernel by default (although you have the option of installing a 2.4 kernel).

On top of that, one of my desktop machines is actually still running 2.2.19. I see no reason for upgrading other than journaling (I know you can get journaling to work in 2.2, but not in combination with the software RAID-1 patches), which I don't really miss since the machine is not mission-critical and never crashes or gets shut down anyway.

Maybe I'll just skip 2.4 on that machine and go straight to 2.6 when that becomes stable (since I hear they're introducing a new firewalling system, again).

I'm still using 2.2 kernel....

[norite]

I have SuSE linux 6.4 on my 486sx laptop, i think it's running the 2.2.14 kernel. But i'm not that much of a kernel freak, so i could be wrong ;)

me too

[vesamies]

All my debian 30.0 boxen run 2.2 kernel.
Except the one which needs 2.4 for smp
support!

using 2.2

[Pflipp]

Hmm... using Debian stable would give you a standard 2.2. And if you're not in for a recompile (e.g. don't need one), you'd probably keep it.

I use Debian stable on a Sun Sparc Classic box with the kernel out of the box.

Re:using 2.2

[Greg W.]

using Debian stable would give you a standard 2.2.

Yes, if you're smart enough to choose the 2.2.20 kernel, or if you're dumb enough not to have read the install guide that tells you how to choose the 2.4.18 kernel.

There's a huge middle ground of people who are neither smart enough to choose 2.2.20 nor dumb enough to have had 2.2.20 thrust upon them, who are running 2.4.18-bf2.4. And then they come into #debian and ask why they don't have any modules available. But the same applies to the dummies who got 2.2.20-idepci thrust upon them, because that one doesn't have any modules either.

Moral of the story: build your own kernel. Do it right. And remember, apt-get install libncurses5-dev!

Whoever decided that 2.2.20-idepci should be the default kernel for idiots who just press Enter without reading what's written on the screen: I hope you got a good laugh out of our misery.

fli4l

[SonOfSengaya]

The "on(e)-disk-router" fli4l is using the 2.2.22 (nice version!) kernel. I think the 2.4.X kernel would be just too big and you really don't need USB support for a 60 MHz Pentium router with a floppy-disk only!

Re:Why 2.2? (going OT)

[Anonymous Coward]

NOBODY CARES! shut up.

sparc32

[Anonymous Coward]

2.2.x has been vastly easier to get running on sparc32 than anything in 2.4.x. I have several utility servers (DNS, etc.) running Debian, and they'll move to 2.2.24, but not 2.4.20. Much easier to work with.

And what is wrong, I ask...

[n9hmg]

with 1.2.13? My 466SX/33 stayed there when I chickened out of trying to convert to ELF. Now, it's just a point of pride.

uname -a

[gdav]

Linux localhost 2.0.36 #1 Tue Oct 13 22:17:11 EDT 1998 i486 unknown

It's a 486/66 which serves an old inkjet.

Its uptime is equal to the interval between power cuts. The best I ever got was about 400 days.

This is a joke, right?

[Greg W.]

Are the slashdot editors really such incompetent Linux fanboys that they all think the 2.2 kernel series is dead? My god... they probably even think 2.0 is dead!

[kernel.org]
The latest stable version of the Linux kernel is: 2.4.20
The latest prepatch for the stable Linux kernel tree is: 2.4.21-pre5
The latest beta version of the Linux kernel is: 2.5.64
The latest snapshot for the beta Linux kernel tree is: 2.5.64-bk5
The latest 2.2 version of the Linux kernel is: 2.2.24
The latest 2.0 version of the Linux kernel is: 2.0.39

I run 2.2.x at home whenever possible. I have one box on which I must run 2.4.x in order to be able to run X, because it's got an i810 video chipset in it, and 2.2.x doesn't have agpgart. So I have to run 2.4.18 [1] on that box. But when I run 2.4.18, I can't use both X and the NFS client at the same time. Starting up X and then attempting to access files in an NFS-mounted file system causes whatever process is touching NFS to go into La-La-Land and never come back. This even prevents a clean reboot -- I have to sit through an fsck (fortunately ext3 makes it faster). So I stopped running NFS on that box.

And people wonder why I switched my server to OpenBSD!

At work, I administer a Red Hat server which I recently updated to kernel 2.0.39. From kernel 2.0.36. Unfortunately, that by itself didn't fix the problem I was seeing, but adding more swap space seems to have done the trick. The other Linux systems at work all run 2.2.* kernels.

Linus lied to you. There is no 2.4.20. It's really 2.4.0-pre20. If you read the 2.4.* kernel names that way, you will understand why your boxes keep having the problems they're having. And while you're sitting there, waiting for 2.4.18 to compile, you might as well read up on the IDE driver problems in 2.4.19 and 2.4.20. Higher numbers are not better.

[1] 2.4.18: the least benightedly unstable 2.4.x kernel it's even been my profound displeasure not to be able to avoid running.

Re: A 486 is perfectly fine

[gozar]

I use FreeSCO as a floppy based router/masq machine. Quickest setup ever!

Logic

[Lazaru5]

What does the submitter care if RedHat EOLs 6.2 if he's building his kernels by hand anyway. An EOL for 6.2 would mean he wouldn't get new RPMs or support for it. It's not like it would suddenly prevent manual installation of kernels.

Poor VPN Masquerade Support in 2.4

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still running 2.2 on all my production NAT firewalls because they need to support VPN masquerading for both PPTP and IPSEC. The VPN masqerade code works flawlessly under 2.2.19, and you can even use the stock RedHat kernel RPM. No support for IPSEC over NAT is available in any version of 2.4 generically; you can hack it in for a machine if you have to but it certainly isn't automatic like the 2.2 setup is.

I do.

[Lispy]

On my small network router/fileserver in my homeLAN (A Panasonic CF-41-Notebook). Why should i fix it if it isnt broken?

Running 2.2 untill last week

[n1ywb]

I was running 2.2.19 on my APRS digipeater untill last week. It was always stable, I don't recall it ever crashing. About once every few months the AX.25 stack would fail and I'd have to restart the KISS interface, but other than that it was pretty flawless.

I'm now running 2.4.20, libax25 0.0.10, and aprsdigi 2.1.2. We'll see how it goes...

still using 2.2.x

[Anonymous Coward]

who still uses 2.2.x...?

me.

i've got a suse 6.4 box still running 2.2.20...i lost track of the uptime...

The D-word

[ajlill]

I don't think anyone has mentioned drivers yet! I've got an old digiboard that just doen't work under 2.4. I suspect the driver't been poked just enough to compile, but never tested. Not surprising since it's a 10 year old EISA card. I've got another system running an olicom token ring card of the same age... Third party driver that hasn't been updated in half a decade.

Precisely.

[Dthoma]

As far as I can tell, the improvements in 2.6 are mainly in terms of interactivity and process scheduling. If you're a home user who uses their machine for all kinds of things, then 2.6 probably will be quite a big thing for you. But if you administer a bunch of web servers where having tried-and-tested software is more important than whether or not you can click and drag a window around without XMMS skipping then you'll probably just stick with 2.0/2.2/2.4.

lemme give a shout out....

[Darth_brooks]

.....To all my coyote linux homies! Word bitch, Coyote like a muhfucker.

Just kidding. Coyote's help boards do tend to read like an AOL teen chat sometimes. Supposedly Coyote's moving to the 2.4 kernel "in the near future", but I won't hold my breath. Despite using an older kernel, and being floppy based, Coyote still manages to pack in a lot of useful features.

http://www.coyotelinux.com For all your single floppy disk-based routing, firewall, and DHCP server needs. Now with reduced fat, 50% more in each box, and ssh authentication!

Weenies!

[Roadkills-R-Us]

I only recently retired a Slackware system based on 1.2.8, but with a 1.3.97 kernel - and that only because my colo host was tired of an ancient, 2 ft tall Dell server in his rack...

2.2 PPC firewall machine, and staying that way

[MMHere]

My firewall is a PPC machine running a variant of 2.2. It has experienced uptimes so long the /proc/uptime counter rolled over. I don't intend changing this any time soon.

Here's its uname (certain details X'd out):

Linux xxxxx 2.2.xx Sat Dec 25 16:40:13 EST 1999 ppc

Running Kernel 2.2.x???

[magic weaver]

ME!

Well my Sun Cobalt (Raq 4i) server anyway. It's working well enough to host my web & email server so I say leave it alone.

You wouldn't believe the headaches I had to go through to update my workstation from 2.2.x to 2.4.x

Re: A 486 is perfectly fine

[Billly Gates]

A name change might be needed with the recent SCO fiasco. Yes, freesco has nothing whatsoever to do with SCO but the name does not sound good. Not to mention SCO could sue them because part of their name is in their's. Still I am glad someone else is making a quality router distro. I was afraid the linux router project would die.

kernel 2.2

[orient]

I am running Debian (with kernel 2.2) on some machines because 2.4.x used to crash and panic. They are production servers and never give me headaches.

Marutukku... aka rubberhose...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the maru stegfs box runs 2.2 because the rubberhose fs doesn't work correctly in 2.4.

2.2 on network machine

[Anonymous Coward]

I still run 2.2 on two out of 5 of my web servers. 2.2.18 on one, and 2.2.16 on the other I believe. I see no reason to upgrade as they both run fine still, and I don't want to bring the servers down to do kernel upgrading. They have been up since I installed them, and plan to keep it that way.

2.4 doesn't work on certain computers

[r6144]

I have a Pentium 166 that had been assembled from garbage parts. Linux 2.2 as in RH7.0 works, but Linux 2.4 as in RH7.3 doesn't find the D-Link ethernet card reliably, although exactly the same parameters for ne.o have been used and extensive isapnp tweaking had been done. So I just reverted to RH7.0's kernel.

I'm going to submit a bug report when I have time, but it is probably going to be difficult to write a helpful one.