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Linux Kernel 2.4.21 Released
An anonymous reader writes "After > 6 months of waiting, 2.4.21 is here. Lots of cleanups, and a patch which gives a MAJOR boost to the 'feel' of the system under heavy disk IO, especially on IDE systems. As usual, available from your local kernel.org mirror or ftp.COUNTRYCODE.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/! Tidbit: 'Current bandwidth utilization 131.72 Mbit/s '." See the Changelog for new stuff.
Why are you running a release candidate on a production server?
If the server(s) is/are performing correctly, why bother upgrading? What will it buy you? Just apply security patches and don't tinker with anything else.
Hoping RH pushes updated kernels for RH9. Piss-poor IDE disk performance is my one big gripe with my Linux boxen at the moment; whole machine feels like shit when something heavy is running the disk in the background. :(
cd /usr/src/linux /blah/patch-2.4.21.bz2|patch -p1
bzcat
make oldconfig
blah blah blah
And you people still wonder why so many people stick to Windows instead of trying Linux? When I can double-click an icon and click OK and have it install the updates give me a call.
What do you expect? Vanilla kernel compiles/updates aren't for the average joe. They can wait for their easy distro update.
> people should be only downloading the patch anyway
:)
Yeah, right, and people should be writing in Esperanto on their Dvorak layout keyboards, too, but that's about the same likelihood.
If they _really_ want people to actually use the patches, they should release the patches first, wait about a week, THEN release the full kernels. Evil, I know.
Sounded more like laziness than cluelessness/newbie-ism to me. If the person was smart enough to get a release candidate kernel onto his server, he's either smart enough to figure out if he wants/needs to update to the actual release or he's using a distro and should ask them for an updated package that is known to work with their other packages.
I do not have a signature
Perhaps if SCO would actually reveal the code to the public, a version could be made that is clean of "SCO's" code. Of course, they might just get laughed at if they reveal the code.
Why would anyone download multiple Debian CDs before installing? That just doesn't make sense. The most you should download is a 150 meg bootable CDROM image, then let the rest of the packages you want come over HTTP when you choose to install them.
Debian prides itself on an enormous amount of packages... nearly twice as many, counting bytes, as RedHat provides. To attempt to download "a copy of Debian" is wrong and wasteful. The fun of Debian comes in when you decide, on the spur of the moment, to try some exotic free software program and can apt-get it in a much less time that it would take to even figure out the name of the RPM you'd need to install on a "normal" Linux system.
Even if the desired install computer doesn't have fast internet access, burning 7 CDs is excessive. There probabably won't even be 2 CDs worth of packages you really want to install. Of the top ten largest packages in Debian, six of them are only desirable for hardcore software developers.
Yes, I have heard of the great "apt-get" and will definitely exercise it a bit.
Even if you install packages from CD-Rom, you'll use the same interface as if you were getting it live from HTTP. The only difference is that it'll prompt you to insert the right disc first... and since most packages are small, it'll often take more time for you to find the disc than to just get it from the server.
You didn't mention if you had downloaded the stable or testing Debian... testing is generally prefered, because it's not as painfully obselete. If you value stability, "stable" is good of course. But if you want to have fun and experiment, then newer is better. And if you're using "testing", then you'll probably want to keep up with changes made after the CDs were burnt. Debian "testing" CD-Roms go obselete really fast.
I don't know why you have a problem with the naming of RPMs. I find that it is usually the same as the program or package name.
RPM names also contain at least the version string, and often an indication of which architecture the software will run on. Sometimes supported OS versions are mixed in too. For example, when I tried to install a package on a Red Hat system, I had to download that RPM. Then go to install it, and find out I needed multiple other RPMs first, which need even more RPMs to work.
The point of apt-get is you, the installing user, never even see the *.deb file that the package actually comes in. The hunt for dependencies is completely hidden from you.
Of course, RedHat users can optionally run apt-get themselves, but that's not formally supported by the distribution developer.
I won't go into the whole problem of not getting *.deb files for new, bleeding edge software. It's an accepted fact that Debian users who wish to try something brand-new will be compiling it themselves.