Slashdot Mirror
Linux Kernel 2.6.0-test6 Released
lamont116 writes "The latest in the series of beta kernels was just released by the fine folks who have given us Linux. Enjoy!" The Changelog has a hefty 240K of miscellaneous changes... LWN has an overview of the updates.
- Linux Kernel 2.6.0-test6 (full) [32MB]
- Linux Kernel 2.6.0-test6 (patch only) [1MB]
It still seems wrong to improve performance through a Slashdotting, but the more the merrier!UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I expect Arjan to have updated Red Hat packages soon at http://people.redhat.com/arjanv/2.5/
p age=kernel for the information for making these kernels work on RHL.
Remember though that some things have changed between 2.4 and 2.6 that can't just be worked around by installing new packages. (USB module names, some mount points, that kind of thing.) If you want a clean boot you will have to change some of the init scripts, and this will break booting 2.4. So it's a bit all or nothing at the moment, and I recommend people who aren't convinced it will do everything they need it to do (I couldn't get my network card working under 2.6) stay on 2.4 until it's released proper.
Check out http://thomer.com/linux/migrate-to-2.6.html and http://www.fearthecow.net/index.pl?section=guest&
The torrent for the new kernel: click me!
The only way bugs get fixed is if you report them. Maybe you should submit a bug describing your hardware and boot messages so the kernel dudes can get to fixing it for test7...
It does make Linux more responsive on the desktop too, although many of the performance improvements will be most noticeable to those running clusters.
I'd respectfully disagree and say that 2.6 promises to be *much* more responsive (based on our initial tests). Desktop responsiveness is a key factor in getting more adoption, even for the basics.
No, you don't need to be using Gentoo.
I had that problem with -test1. Got around it by turning off ACPI support.
Since you tried out a development kernel you seem to be a developer or at least part of quality assurance. Therefor you are not allowed to ignore bugs like that and go back to the working version. Instead you have to find out the source of the problem, write a nice bug report and file it.
If I had the time at the moment to find the source of the problem, I would... However, that's not an option today. I have, however, sent along a nice bug report describing the problem and my system configuration.
Dinivin
On the contrary one of my biggest complaints with the desktop currently is the complete lack of responsiveness when doing any CPU intensive processes and choppy media because I'm doing something else at the same time and it takes too long for the CPU to get back to noatun. The 2.6 kernel will be a significant boost to linux usability on the desktop.
I stole this Sig
If you are looking for an idiot, I suggest you consult a mirror.
the newer -mm patches (for -test4 and -5) are supposed to fix this. These are the Andrew Morton kernels, you can find them under /pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm IIRC. They also claim to fix the "make RPM" target (haven't tried that one myself yet tho).
/dev/hda losing its interrupt. I switched off ACPI and all power management since I default to 24x7 SMP use.
Might want to have a look at those, since he's the next "stable" maintainer.
Also (In reply to a previous post) I had similar probs with
Yes, some rc script hacking is required.
Overall: this stuff blows my mind, I thought just SMP was fast when it came out, but this is in another league. FWIW, my base system is RH9 with updates from RH.
C|N>K
Time for me to plug the mirror I'm affiliated with...
Wuarchive's kernel.org mirror
I'm preparing an end-user 2.6 switching howto here Pass the word.
I decided to play around with the 2.6.0 tests after the last release (test5). After a bit of effort, I got nearly everything working except for wavetable MIDI support with my SB Live! card. Rather irritating, since it can't seem to create /dev/sequencer properly (and I had it working just fine with the alsa driver module in 2.4.x).
Otheriwse, things run smoothly with occasional bugs (the bttv driver sometimes flakes out under heavy load if I'm not using 'overlay').
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Andrew Morton, who will be maintaining the Linux 2.6 kernel, will be speaking at SCALE 2x Other 2.6 developers include William Irwin, and Patrick Mochel.
>> They've never even announced a date for Longhorn. What on earth are you talking about?
I quote from one of their Press Pass documents they have online at microsoft.com:
"Over the course of 2004 you'll see a couple of releases in the betas for "Longhorn" and we'll see that coming to market in 2005.
Now, I'm sure that many of you have heard about or wonder about the possibility of whether we're going to do something before "Longhorn," is there an interim release, and that's something that I don't expect us to do. Currently we have some additional releases that are coming out as follow-ons to the XP Media Center Edition and the Tablet PC Edition so we've got some great advances and fit and finish and addressing additional international marketplaces with new handwriting recognition, new guide data for Europe for the Media Center and so on.
So you'll see some good incremental moves there but really the weight of the company, the weight of all the people in the Windows client division and across the platform's division, the weight of that effort that we're doing is around "Longhorn" and that's what we're focused on and we hope to get you all really pulling the same way so we can come out with a huge wave of excitement for the industry when "Longhorn" ships in 2005."
(quotes and italics mine.)
Several online sources have credited varying target dates for Longhorn, but all generally agree that 2005 will be the earliest that it will be available to the mass market:
Longhorn Betas in 2004, GA in 2005 (ENT News)
Analyst Pegs Longhorn Release at 2006 (ENT News)
Microsoft Pushes Back 'Longhorn' Release (Open Tech Support)
A Longhorn Delay? Not Quite (WinInfo)
Microsoft announces Longhorn release date (CNet News.com)
(I have no affiliation with these sources.)
Microsoft themselves show that 2005 is the target date of Longhorn in a slide picture. (png image)
>> As if that matters. Those are early, early alpha shots, as we all know. All the cool builds with the 3D acceleration are in a different Microsoft lab anyway that hasn't had one of their builds leaked.
First, can you prove there are "cool builds" that will have 100% of the suggested features in a shipping version of Longhorn? Secondly, the history of Microsoft's software release stategy has been plainly made clear numerous times. Hype, Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, Buzzwords-o'-the-day, Gross Appropriation (oh sorry, I mean Innovation), and just downright unfullfilled expectations litter the computer timescape.
For a company that has been in the software business of well over 25 years, one would think that with their talk of innovation and "exciting new time-saving" features, we would all have an operating system on our machines that used voice controlled openGL hyper speed interfaces, smart enough to do your work for you while you browsed sites like slashdot. Isn't the entire point of using a computer to save time and be more productive? This sadly is not the case today .
>> I'm not really sure what breathing room you're talking about. The developer preview of Longhorn is coming out later this year. The list of features Longhorn already boasts is staggering, and I doubt within two years that ANY Linux projects will come close. We'll still be stucking using X11 with a hacked on desktop simulator, business as usual.
user@host$ diff
Prior to that W2k was installed on my second Abit, a KT7A, on a HP stripe. The Gentoo second boot never spawned errors reading from the stripe, though writing was off limits of course.
Are you running the very latest Abit MB+HP BIOS? That board was a pig until they straightened this out.