The Must-Fix List For 2.6.0

Jeremy Andrews writes "Andrew Morton posted a lengthy list of items that need to be done before the 2.5 development kernel tree should be turned into the 2.6 stable kernel tree. He prefaced his list by noting that 2.6.0 does not mean, "it's finished, ship it", alternatively offering, "I'd propose that 2.6.0 means that users can migrate from 2.4.x with a good expectation that everything which they were using in 2.4 will continue to work, and that the kernel doesn't crash, doesn't munch their data and doesn't run like a dog. Other definitions are welcome.""

Comments

2.4 will be known as "the kernel that sucked"

[Anonymous Coward]

Testify, brother!

We keep trying to go to 2.4, and end up back at good ol' 2.2 every time.

Most of our NFS infrastructure cannot be made to run under 2.4, and the scsi drivers (especially adaptec) suck (because they are poorly rewritten 2.2 drivers) and many of the network device drivers (such as, TG3) are so poorly written they will lock up your machine completely in a packet storm. Or, alternatively, they will create a packet storm.

I'm posting this anonymously because Alan's already mad enough at my whining and complaining.

It's free software. Use 2.2 until something better (maybe 2.6, maybe the mythical 3.0, maybe the Hurd) evolves.

Start Now

[MBCook]

I've been running various versions of 2.5 for a while now. You need to make sure you have the new module utils installed, but otherwise just use it! I haven't had any problems with it (other than it can be a bit of a pain to get the nVidia binary drivers working, but it's not that bad). I think the performance is better. But if you can (IE you don't need hardware that doesn't currently work) then I'd suggest you use it.

Re:but uhm

[bobbozzo]

You should be able to check that by unloading and re-loading the driver modules to see if the memory is freed.

Another culprit might be the X server.

Re:Fix the token ring card support!!!

[MartinG]

Just out of interest, what problems are you getting?
I've been using linux with token ring daily for years without problems. I'm using a pcmcia IBM 16/4 card at the moment, but I had a pci ibm card before also with no problems.
Initially, I was using an IBM lanstreamer (about 2 years or more ago), and I had occasional problems with that under heavy network load. It would just stop working, although the kernel didn't seem to think anything was wrong. "ifconfig down" followed by "ifconfig up" would usually fix it, but sometimes oopsed. I attempted to debug it once but got lost.