What Will Be in Linux 2.7?

Realistic_Dragon writes "The first discussion has been sighted on the Linux kernel mailing list to put together a feature list of things that should go into Linux 2.7 - including hotplug CPU & Ram support, network transparent sound and improvements to Netfilter to bring it up to the the level of OpenBSD's Packet Filter. And all this before most of us have started to run 2.6.0-preX, or even a 2.6 series stable release happening. Perhaps if you have a (sensible) idea now would be a good time to voice it, otherwise you will have to wait for 2.9 to get it included."

Comments

Re:The better question...

[Nick Driver]

What WON'T be in Linux 2.7?

Uhh, you mean like any SCO code?

Remove Request

[Nom du Keyboard]

Remove SCO from all future distributions. :^)

Re:Hotplug CPU and RAM support?

[Feztaa]

I believe they're referring to some mainframes, in which there are bays of CPUs/RAM that can be swapped in and out while the system is running.

CPU hotplug support is not designed for removing the processor from your single-CPU x86 box.

What Linux Needs

[like_broken_records]

What Linux needs is some fatal errors. How about a screen of one solid color that comes on to warn you that all your work for the past hour is gone. You have to remember that Linux is competing with windows. If you can't beat them Join them. p.

Re:Hotplug CPU and RAM support?

[RadioheadKid]

Nope, you just have to do it REALLY fast...

And don't forget to lick all the Cheetos orange dust off your fingers before you start.

What I'd like to see...

[ikewillis]

is a scheduler on the same caliber as Solaris, so that the kernel can utilize multiple schedulers simultaneously. Linux currently ships with only a timeshare scheduler, but Solaris supports a number of different schedulers which can all operate simultaneously. Administrators can also move processes between different schedulers on the fly as well. A Fair Share Scheduler, for example, would be nice so that resources on large systems can be partitioned effectively as to prevent certain processes from monopolizing system resources. The CPU/RAM hotplug support would be nice... glad to see Linux trying to catch up to where Solaris was years ago. Just kidding :)

Re:What I'd like to see...

[paulbd]

linux doesn't only ship with a timeshare scheduler. it includes both the SCHED_FIFO and SCHED_RR schedulers, which provide close-to-real-time scheduling capabilities. most pro apps in the audio realm use one or both of these. they can both be used alongside the SCHED_OTHER ("timeshare") scheduler.

what would be more interesting would be CPU cycle reservation, which is already present in OS X, and would be very useful for any streaming media software.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[photon317]

Oh please. No doubt having had a different focus and so many years of time advantage, there are key areas where Solaris still trumps Linux. For instance, multiprocessor scalability (although it seems they sacrificed performance on 1-2 cpu boxes to acheive this result for their 64+ cpu boxes).

However, don't ever claim that Sun's kernel is in general superior to Linux. In a lot of ways Sun's kernel is ancient and crappy compared to Linux. Take a look at Sun's IP stack versus Linux's, for instance. Or how about lvm+softraid? When will Solaris stop relying on Veritas? (and don't answer diskuite, please). Or how about good integrated netfilter-like code?

While we're on it, let's talk hardware. The price /performance ratios on UltraSparcs make Xeons look like a super bargain, not to mention Athlons. It's way past late for them to have closed up the Sparc shop and moved everything over to this cheaper commodity platform that can pump more mips or flops per dollar than Sun can. And how freaking long did it take them to adopt PCI? At one point in the past 64-bit 25Mhz SBus was acceptable.... but how long did they have to delay deploying PCI on their high end systems before finally giving in?? It was nuts, and they've finally owned up and gone pretty much solid PCI-only now. Of course, now most of my Suns have 64/66 PCI busses, while my latest Intels are doing PCI-X...

Re:What I'd like to see...

[ikewillis]

"However, don't ever claim that Sun's kernel is in general superior to Linux. In a lot of ways Sun's kernel is ancient and crappy compared to Linux."

I believe the word you're looking for is mature, and immature on the Linux side. Take Linux's VM implementation, which has been scrapped and rewritten from scratch multiple times within 2.4 alone. Meanwhile the Solaris VM has been fine tuned over the past decade. Solaris's time share scheduler has been O(1) for well over half a decade, whereas Linux is just now getting an O(1) time share scheduler.

"Take a look at Sun's IP stack versus Linux's, for instance."

Care to tell me how Linux is superior? You seem to be only assuming it is, and leaving the burden of proof upon me. Sorry, I put it back on you.

But just for review of some networking features: Solaris has offered stateful I/O multiplexing through the /dev/poll mechanism as well as asynchronous I/O for years. These features are only now being implemented in Linux with things like epoll(), which you'll need a 2.6 kernel and userland support in glibc to use. It will be at least a year before we can begin to expect the average Linux system to support stateful I/O multiplexing through epoll().

Or how about lvm+softraid? When will Solaris stop relying on Veritas? (and don't answer diskuite, please).

Don't answer Solstice Disk Suite? Perhaps you forget that the LVM was modeled after the Sun Volume Manager (which later became SDS) Perhaps you'd have an argument if you were championing FreeBSD's vinum, which was modeled after the Veritas Volume Manager, however you're trying to champion a technology which mimics the Solaris implementation yet saying to discount that very implementation. Pathetic...

"Or how about good integrated netfilter-like code?"

Sorry, people aren't going to be using their $20,000 systems as routers for their cable modems.

"While we're on it, let's talk hardware. The price /performance ratios on UltraSparcs make Xeons look like a super bargain, not to mention Athlons.

Please show me a system with better price/performance than the V440: http://store.sun.com/catalog/doc/BrowsePage.jhtml? cid=104994&parentId=48589

Keep in mind that no one in their right mind is going to shell out $26,000 for a system without a warranty. The V440 comes with 3 years of parts and on-site labor.

I'd certainly like to see you configure an equivalent system (the 1.28GHz UltraSPARC IIIi is equivalent to a 1.8GHz Opteron) from a vendor that offers at least a year of parts and on-site labor.

"It's way past late for them to have closed up the Sparc shop and moved everything over to this cheaper commodity platform that can pump more mips or flops per dollar than Sun can. And how freaking long did it take them to adopt PCI?"

The earliest Sparc systems I know of supporting PCI were Ultra 5s, released in 1995, about the same time most PC systems were starting to feature PCI.

"Of course, now most of my Suns have 64/66 PCI busses, while my latest Intels are doing PCI-X..."

Unless you're talking about the Opteron, the scalability and throughput of x86 systems is severely limited by the interconnect used between CPUs. P4 Xeons essentially share the FSB between processors, greatly limiting the amount of bus bandwidth that can be simultaneously utilized by multiple processors. With the P4, keep in mind also that the P4 does not cache operations, only micro-ops in its trace cache, so whenever the trace cache becomes tainted (by, say, mispredicing a branch) the P4 must fall back on retrieving the original opcodes out of main memory, saturating the front side bus (this is why Intel has been aggressively stepping up the bus speed of the P4)

For use as a high performance server, Linux does not rival Solaris in

Re:What I'd like to see...

[cybrthng]

You have to be kidding right? Dump Veritas? What are you smoking? Veritas isn't just a Volume Manager/Disksuite it is a supported/planned and critical piece of your infrastructure! You rely on Veritas because you know it is tried, true and recoverable. The excellent relation of Sun and Veritas is a reason to use the platform just like Veritas on HPUX and other platforms. Your not just paying for the software, your paying for the support and paying for the mission critical needs that demand that solution. Veritas is an EXCELLENT package and nothing in linux comes close to the Veritas & Sun solutions on certified hardware. (And if you compare the linux solutions on linux certified systems with the same performance, manageability and support you get from sun i would like to see ONE vendor that can compare!)

I also don't believe you understand the usefullness of Sun (non linux)solutions. You keep on correlating the costs to acquisition. In the real world the hardware/software costs don't mean squat. Any large IT business knows that your biggest cost is employees, software, licensing, support and contractors.

For one, i can spend 32,000 on a 4 way 64 bit cpu machine with 8 gigs of memory, 500gb diskspace and have Hotswappable CPU's, a VASTLY supperior backplane, Vastly superior scalability in growth and a proven reliable architecture. You Can't buy ANY linux solution/Wintel solution that comes close to the Solaris/RS6000/HPUX based systems out there. As i've stated before there is only ONE vendor that offers a machine feature comparison to suns LOW END/MID RANGE v880's and it doesn't come close in comparison to power. For example the only linux enabled hot swappable cpu/backplane/intel solution is built on 4 700 mhz pentium 3 processors and costs 24,000 for the base system. My Quad 1.2ghz v880 out of the box doesn't require anything proprietary, but on the linux solution you have to run the vendors version of linux, the vendors version of the apps compiled and can only use the vendors approved addons. Sure sun is only one vendor, but solaris is solaris. There isn't a mix match of versions, releases or there isn't a version of solaris for my v880 that doesn't work on my e10k. I can grow with a common platform to support from 1 user to 65000+ users and even cluster to support from that point on.

You have to get your mindset away from free/cheap = better. You have to realize that in the business world the costs for platforms that are tried and true is expected and also minimal compared to the costs to keep it running.

I would rather run my 2 terrabyte financial application on a slower sun server because of the reliability, the proven architecture and HA features. You have to remember that in my case 5 minutes of downtime costs $137,000. Suddenly a $3,000 Veritas volume management solution and a $100,000 hardware platform not only is justifyable but almost even insufficient in itself if you break out the cost vs requirements ratio.

I can make my 3 Terrabyte Clarrion System, my Sun V880 Systems, my Sun 280/240r webservers and my solaris management workstations run for months at a time in pure harmony. The fact that NOTHING CHANGES ON A WHIM IS A GODSEND!! The stability, and slowness by which things change is the reason why businesses rely on such as the costs are far from just your hardware/os purchase price.

BSP/IP support!

[Tumbleweed]

BSP/IP - "Bitch Slap Protocol/Internet Protocol" support - for remotely Bitch Slapping stupid users. An idea whose time has come(tm).

Oh yeah, and add more SCO(tm) code - adding Evil(tm) to MS Windows(tm) sure didn't hurt the bottomline at MS(tm)! :)

Disclaimer: (tm), (r), and (c) wherever appropriate...

Note: BSP/IP is defensively patented by FlyByNite Industries, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Harkonnen Enterprises.

A Web Browser...Definitely

[peterdaly]

If the name of keeping up with the leader of the industry, I think we should integrate Mozilla. A web browser is an integral part of a modern OS.

-Pete

Two Kernel Monte

[strredwolf]

http://www.scyld.com/products/beowulf/software/mon te.html

Already there.

Re:Two Kernel Monte

[sjames]

Furthermore, it is a boot process (userspace apps terminate), it just uses the linux kernel as the bootloader rather than something like grub.

Re:Erm..Userfriendly UI?

[Dr. Zowie]

User friendly configuration has been done.

I'd settle for power management working right.

Duh

[grub]

What Will Be in Linux 2.7?

Plenty of SCO's intellectual property, duh!

Kernel Sanders

[KrackHouse]

The beauty of Linux (IMO) is the ability to tweak the kernel. Why not take advantage of the fact that there is source code to be modified and make it simple for the average user to recompile the kernel? It's an ugly, ugly process right now and a lot of people are running distro kernels that aren't as optimized as they could be.

FreeBSD-style jails

[Hubert Q. Gruntley]

FreeBSD jails rock. Root access to your own logical partition which looks and smells just like a dedicated machine, with no overhead.

Virtual host providers can do it for free with FreeBSD, or with ~10% CPU load using User-Mode Linux.

Re:Good 64 bit support

[Anonymous Coward]

Good 64 bit support was added in what, Linux 1.2 or so. Digital (remember them?) borrowed Linus a few Alpha boxes for the purpose. One can still find the occasional kinks in less used applications, but the kernel has been working fine on 64-bit computers for a good while.

Split out the drivers

[11223]

I've been wanting this for a while - it's time for most of the drivers in the kernel to be split out. There's no reason why the kernel sources need to be as large as they are, and there's absolutely no reason why eg sound drivers and network cards can't be maintained independently with their own build process. Tying them to kernel releases means waiting until the next release for driver improvements, can bottleneck development, and leads to the 41M(!) tarball that is 2.6test7.

This would require setting up a decent build process for modules outside the kernel, but that's a good thing anyway. Have you tried to compile the nVidia drivers lately? It can be a pain if your kernel headers aren't quite right. If there were a decent external API and good support for building third party modules, this would also make it easier for manufacturers to supply independent drivers.

Re:Hotplug CPU and RAM support?

[Thud457]

"CPU hotplug support is not designed for removing the processor from your single-CPU x86 box."

I can't wait to see the kiddies show off that feature! "The new kernel has CPU hotplug support, here, watch... oh CRAP."

Re:DRM support

[cK-Gunslinger]

Bah, let's just go ahead and put Half-Life 2 in the kernel. It shouldn't be too hard now that the source is available. =)

Native Support for SATA Drives!!!

[goldspider]

The only barrier to me running Linux on my home computer is that Linux has no native support for serial-ATA hard drives. As such, of course, I am unable to install Linux.

PLEASE include native support for SATA!!

A oft-requested but oft-ignored request.

[GoNINzo]

I wish there would be default stack protection, right out of the kernel. I'm tired of these repeated buffer overflows, and I know people can code right around them even with stack protection, but at least an attempt to make it harder for stack busting would be nice.