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Linux Kernel 2.6.0-test8 Released
djcapelis writes "It's that time again. Latest release is hot off the presses in this final bit of stabilization before 2.6.0 is finally released. Changelog: here. Use mirrors if you're nice, but kernel.org has a nice little bandwidth readout on the front page so you can see how hard their servers are being hit if you don't feel like tracking one down. A few XFS changes from SGI in there as well if anyone is still worried on that topic. Watch for the MM patches when they come out. The FTP server seems to be snappier for some."
They still haven't fixed the problems in the framebuffers. Anyone know why this is so low priority?
You should use AdiumX on your Mac.
... but kernel.org has a nice little bandwidth readout on the front page so you can see how hard their servers are being hit...
;)
how many people are going to go there not to download, but just to see the nifty meter and end up slashdotting them
Do I need to pay SCO $699 for this release too? Or does the license I purchased from them cover this as well?
What with the SCO stuff and recent interviews, I think it's more than relevant. It seems to me that Linux kernel versions are becoming more and more frequent, so that fact alone makes it worth posting on the front page.
It's like saying, "I'm not a Cubs fan, so why did the LA Times have their game 7 loss as a front page article?"
Answer to both: Because it's high profile.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Well I've been using test5+mm4 under heavy load with no problems. Now the mm4 did include the XFS fix and its been totally stable under constant I/O. Looks like 2.6 is shaping up very nicely. Would like to put it into real production but won't quite yet as there might be still one or two nasty little surprises. Overall thought hats off to Linus et al
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
On the eve of the Linux 2.6 introduction for personal computers, Microsoft's General Manager, Windows Division, Dave Fester posted his thoughts on Linux Kernel 2.6.0-test8. In his comments, Fester concludes that Linux Kernel 2.6.0-test8 is too limited for PC users.
"Unless Linux decides to make radical changes to their service model, a Linux-based operating system will still remain a closed system, where PC owners cannot access content from other operating systems," said Fester. "Additionally, users of Linux are limited to programs from Redhat's install CD... this is a drawback for PC users, who expect choice in music programs, choice in games, and choice in Word Processors from a wide-variety of Microsoft products to use for various purposes. Lastly, if you use Linux's desktop environment along with Linux, you don't have the ability of using the over 40 different Windows XP-compatible GUI skins. When I'm paying for a desktop environment, I want to know that I have choices today and in the future."
When asked how the Linux Kernel 2.60-test8 differs from Windows-based services, Fester talks about Microsoft Office and the different types of options it will offer users. Fester concludes that it will be the best experience that ultimately wins over consumers.
"All told, copmputer fans should look for services that offer the best experience and take advantage of the best digital rights platform available for PCs. With Windows XP 2003, you get faster starts, better quality internet, and support for the most websites," Fester said.
if 2.6 has better serial ata support than currently? I still can't get it to work.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Does anyone know where i can find a good list of new features that are included in the 2.6 kernel?
Anybody know any good articles that explain exactly how things will differ for upgrading Linux users (non performance type things) i.e. what's happening with dev and proc? loadable modules? whatever?
Cure cancer.. and stuff! www.team45.info
Every few days?? How about every few minutes!
A monkey could take a huge, steamy shit in the middle of the floor and you could plug a mouse, keyboard and monitor into that monkey shit and have a superior system than you would get with an M$ system.. And it would get fewer viruses and crash far less often!
Oi, it's not that hard. www.XX.kernel.org or ftp.XX.kernel.org, where XX is your two-letter country code, like fr for France.
I am running test 7 on my laptop now. Works perfectly.
This is not the real Alan Cox!
I know this becuase the REAL Alan Cox would never use punctuation or capitalization! Clearly this is an impostor.
Kernel versions seem more frequent for two reasons:
... unsnagging. There was about a year of wait between 2.4.19 and 2.4.20 (or was it .18 and .19 ... ?), and nobody wants to see that happen again. So, Marcelo is paying closer attention to his release schedule to make sure there aren't any more really big, really long kernel releases in his branch.
- The development branch is active. Ideally, devel releases get made once every week or two, and this has been the case for a while AFAIK.
- The 2.4 release process has undergone some
I just built test7 (mm1) last night. Now test8 is out!
--
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
This has been posted here before. Check out Dave's post-halloween document.
I find that hard to believe, seeing as how the security updates to fix the recent vulnerabilities came out less than 3 months ago.. and they all required restarts.
My installation skills? How can my installation skills have anything to do with it when Windows XP doesn't let you customize a damn thing during installation?
I think he was talking about hardware installation skills. If XP is crashing on you every 10 minutes, you obviously don't know how to install, configure, and troubleshoot hardware.
#!/
I've been running the 2.6 Test kernel (-mm patches usually) since -test5 and everything has been great.
Multitasking really is a dream. I'm able to compile, listen to music, and surf the web without any slowdown. Im no developer though, so I think that the 2.6 will really help Home/Desktop users.
Of course, home users will like improved multi media performance, but the coolest thing I saw was web page rendering. Web pages render twice as fast (for me) with the 2.6 kernel!! This is very noticable, and very enjoyable.
Ohhhhh, hardware installation skills.
Why didn't ya say so?
After all, Windows lets you change MILLIONS of ULTRA ADVANCED hardware related settings, doesn't it? There are just millions of things you can screw up with Windows, after all, it's made for power users!
Well you can choose your timezone and locale preferences. What more do you want?
isntall skills for winxp?
AC, you are just plain stupid.
17493892 bytes?
You can put roughly 17MB of data on one floppy? Wow! I'm upgrading to test-8 ASAP.
(nice troll by the way)
-bbk
Uh, you must have a very special version of ls, that presumably expresses mode in xrw?xrwwrx notation (where ? is a mystery value), as opposed to standard drwxrwxrwx notation. I also notice the lack of link count, user and group ownership, and last modification date.
Real ls:
Fantasy-ls(tm):
Call me crazy, but I think someone needs to stop making up program output.
I compiled this and got it running on my dell laptop, but the nvidia drivers (for the GeForce2 Go 5200) won't compile for 2.6.0-test8. This is probably due to driver API changes. I haven't poked around to see if Nvidia is working on it though.
/pointer
[%- PROCESS life -%]
what programs are need upgrading to support such a change in the kernel type?
eg, I use mandrake 8.2 (still, I dont have the luxury of a highspeed connection or online ordering, nor do I ave those options, and after seeing the horrors of 9.x, I just compile from scratch)
anyways, what would I need upgraded to support this? what directories would I need added, etc?
I could use the multitasking on my poor 433.
yeah, I know I'm behind the times on many things. so I just have to deal with it, make the best of what I have.
You have my sympathy.
However, It should say something like
cp: complanyreport.ppt: no such file or directory.
2.6.0-test7 was a good 2% faster across the board on file system benchmarks then 2.6.0-test5, lets hope test8 continues that trend.
Benchmarks for both test7, and test8 will be posted on that site within the next week for all those interested in getting the maximum performance out of your Linux box.
Open Source Time and Attendance, Job Costing a
PCMCIA and serial devices did not work with HZ=1000. Anyone know if this has been fixed?
Oh please fix this bug before 2.6.0 is released. :-). There's a business model! hehe
I'll send a check for $20 to the developer who does it
I am already using 2.4.22.mm2 with Ingo's O(1) scheduler and mm patches from Andrew Morton. So what other benifits can I expect by upgrading to 2.6?
What's under yellowstone?
How long will it take until the requisite $699 post?
"Sufferin' succotash."
Don't you mean the installer programs themselves?
We wouldn't want to blame the OS for app faults, right Linux users?
"Sufferin' succotash."
>It's like saying, "I'm not a Cubs fan, so why did the LA Times have their game 7 loss as a front page article?"
Because the LA Times is owned by the Tribune Company, which owns the Chicago Tribune. That's why you get the same signon page (except for the logo) when you try to read an article.
The -test8 changelog is only stuff since -test7. If you're coming from a 2.4 series kernel, the link you want is:
. tx t
http://www.codemonkey.org.uk/post-halloween-2.5
In particular, *NOTE THAT YOU NEED NEW 'modutils' PACKAGES*. Failure to update these will mean 'insmod' and friends *will not work*.
Have you considered just no clicking on the stories with the little picture of a penguin? You might save yourself a lof of heartache that way....
actually, all sorts of viruses would be attracted to a steaming pile of shit.
So thats why there are so many windows viruses about.
You are clearly a troll with no idea about UNIX at all.
Go back to drooling over your pictures of bill gates and spanking your monkey.
Remove all blank lines. Simple.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Do you even know what "hardware installation skills" means? I didn't say anything about drivers. I'm talking about running hardware stable which has nothing to do with software.
I'm not advocating using Windows here, but ignorant statements like Windows XP is "crashing every 10 minutes" really are the mark of an unexperienced computer user. If you're really having those kinds of problems, its a hardware issue, that means you have to open the case to fix it. Win2k/XP have been stable for a long time, major problems are hardware related most of the time.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and just assume you're a troll, in which case your statements don't really have any relevance, now do they?
#!/
I won't argue with you on Win2k's stability, but IMHO, XP is just as unstable as 98.
For example, in XP Pro with all service packs and patches applied, going to an FTP site in IE causes IE to crash, and sometimes XP itself. I've noticed this behavior usually occurs in systems with only >=256mb of RAM, but that is still no reason for the entire OS to lock up.
I've also noticed that XP locks up _ALOT_ because of RAM issues. It really shouldn't be nescessary to have >256mb of RAM for an OS to be stable.
After all, *BSD and Linux both run fine with 128mb.
So far all the 2.6 kernels have had fully broken support for the radeonfb console. It seems to work fine otherwise, but I am not interested if it means I must have 80x25 consoles.
I didn't notice anything about this in the changelog.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The reason for lack of support is not because people lack skills or time. In most cases, it's because they simply don't have the data required to write such a driver.
The thing that bothers me is when things are *supposedly* supported but they don't work. Right now my beef is with the Radeon Framebuffer console. For the most part, it works fine on 2.4.22. It's utterly broken on every 2.6 kernel so far. I'm surprised a bug like this could get through a single cycle, much less EIGHT beta releases. I do not fault anyone for not writing drivers when it's impossible to do so, but I do have a problem when they take a working driver and break it, and don't even bother to test it.
As to space, Everything I really need to do on linux, I can do in 1 or 2 gb anyway.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
.... in the xfsprogs package.
Oh, and there is xfs.fsck but it's a no-op. This
-is- a journaling filesystem you know....
Have you tried normal (i.e. vesa fb, not the radeon module) framebuffer support? works here on a radeon mobility.
Vesa fb doesn't give me the modes I use, I don't believe it supports anything faster than 60Hz, and it's very, very slow.
The driver *WORKS* *FINE* on 2.4.22. Why break it for 2.6?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Because 2.6 is a development kernel where major systems are often heavily modified and old drivers that no one tests remain broken until someone fixes them. If no one tests and report problems with drivers in the development it's assumed that the driver either works fine or no one cares about the driver.
Take a look at How to install Andrew Morton's -mm kernel for some links and explanations of the issues that the -mm patchset is addressing.
2.5 is a development kernel.
2.6 is a beta test for an upcoming production release.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Many X auto-configuration utilities will detect a graphics accelerator and enable the driver with an option for it to be safe on performance. Some drivers can't be enabled at full performance on a number of graphics accelerator and motherboard combinations. Check your /etc/X11/XF86Config file for your "Device" section for a 'Option "noaccel"' or 'Option "SWcursor"' and remove those lines. There are also many other "Option"(s) settings on drivers that may limit performance. Speaking of performance, why are you allowing XFree86 to be the king of the hill on your graphics accelerator? Go check DirectFB or FBdri to see if you can bump XFree86 off your graphics accelerator and put it on a Framebuffer device so you can benefit from a superior graphics subsystem. I'm not knocking XFree86 or X in general, it does things with telnet and XLib that Win32 users can only dream of. The point of using a Framebuffer driver is to optimize performance of your mostly-used applications; for example, if you have support in DirectFB then you can use DirectFB sub-project DirectFBGL and have openGL or GLX applications render quicker as well anything based on GTK+ will benefit as GTK+ support in DirectFB is native and lets you bypass any X overhead. Alas, the more people think of bypassing X technology then the worse applications can become, in perspective of flexibility and network-transparent graphics rendering. That's why X should always be built into applications, it is better to have flexibility than to have a castrated higher-performing product.
Secured Party, Without Prejudice, UCC 1-207: Creditor
Bwahahaha, thank you, I thought *I* was the only one who caught this. That, or somebody just got trolled by a lightweight.
FWIW, last I heard AC has his own branch, which is quite popular in RH and mdk circles it seems. He's also going back to school and taking it easy on the bleeding-edge devel stuff for awhile. I won't argue that he's earned it.
For myself, I follow the current -mm tree pretty closely, preferring minimal patching. Its a joy to use so far, but I'm not doing enterprise stuff or hard testing either.
As usual it seems that Linus "knows" when to lock shit down and stabilize. My predictions for the point releases or even 2.7 include (in order): a disk I/O and/or IDE re-write (long overdue), ditto for serial and FB devices. More merges/cleanups for SCSI.
*Really* olid (Yes, its a word; look it up.) devices are being dropped like flies and poison; it's about time IMHO. I expect this trend to continue.
Probably there will also be the usual FS fixes and some newer DB and security stuff -- probably merging towards simplifying the framework via common atomic ops.
There's probably going to be more convergence between the "enterprise" features and the "real-world" features during the next year or so.
Just my predictions, if anyone can make use of them. This reflects the trends I've seen so far anyway.
C|N>K
While I see the need to adapt to kernel changes in the modutils, I found the lack of functionality in the new module-init-tools annoying.
For example, I had set up a line in modules.conf that would automagically load my sound drivers, restore the mixer settings and do some other things - all without the slow alsa init scripts.
Doesn't work anymore. post-install is gone, probeall is gone. Can somebody explain why the modutils were changed so much?
YASS
Any chance of seeing a comparison of Solaris (x86 presumably) on the same hardware.
An HP-UX comparison would also be useful although you couldn't be sure the hardware was equivalent.
-- Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold.
From the DirectFB homepage, modules section, it says it has native support for Matrox upto G550 and nowhere mentions Parhelia support. This does not mean you lack ability to use DirectFB on your Parhelia if it is VESA compliant: from the DirectFB-Readme, provides,
/etc/lilo.conf:
/etc/fb.modes file. By default the first
DirectFB needs a Linux kernel with frame buffer support. Check the
documentation in the kernel tree (/usr/src/linux/Documentation/fb/) on
how to enable the frame buffer device for your graphics card.
The generic VESA frame buffer device does not support mode switching
and you will not get hardware acceleration. To make DirectFB work with
veasfb, you should add the following lines to
append="video=vesa:ywrap,mtrr"
'ywrap' enables panning with wraparound.
'mtrr' enables setting caching type for the frame buffer to write-combining.
vga=791
This sets the mode on startup. 791 means 1024x768@16, 788 means 800x600@16.
All VESA Video Modes:
Bits 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
8 769 771 773 775 796
16 785 788 791 794 798
32 786 789 792 795 799
Other frame buffer devices support mode switching. DirectFB will only
support modes listed in your
entry found is used.
There are many known system setups where there is openGL support in DRI and no native 2D support for DirectFB, yet DirectFB can use VESA compatibility and allow applications to use VESA+DRI for accelerated openGL (and even GLX, with a hack to combine XDirectFB and DirectFBGL) in such a way as XFree86 can use the X_VGA16 server. If your Parhelia supports VESA, then you can use DirectFB. I don't know how anyone can simply "try it", due to the variation in Linux environments. Perhaps, try creating a seperate Linux partition and OS and manipulate DirectFB onto it. I use Linux From Scratch on a Alpha 164UX, and as well have available Debian 3.0 and RedHat 7 and GNU/HURD and all three *BSD. I mostly use Linux From Scratch on experimental software because it doesn't have any breakable components (.DEB/.RPM) and LFS is MUCH easier to repair because it is more simple. To begin with, did Matrox build Parhelia's accelerated-openGL driver as a closed-source DRI module? If Matrox used a DRI design, then it should work with DirectFB no problem. Oh and just to remind you, the DirectFB project also implemented its own native X Server, XDirectFB, and it works pretty well and lets you have all your favorite GNOME/KDE/etc X Clients connect to DirectFB just as they did in XFree86 or Xig or MetroLink. If you aren't enthused with XDirectFB, there is nothing stopping anyone from making XFree86 use a framebuffer device and co-exist with DirectFB.
Secured Party, Without Prejudice, UCC 1-207: Creditor
thats great...
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...