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Linux 2.6.0 Expected In Mid-December
Ridgelift writes "CRN is reporting the release of Linux 2.6.0 in mid-December. 'Torvalds, Linux's lead developer and now an OSDL Fellow, and Linux kernel maintainer Andrew Morton this week released the test10 version of Linux 2.6 after a three-year development effort. A final test11 version is expected before they sign off on the production version next month.' Get ready for 'major scalability improvements, faster performance, enhanced support for embedded systems and, to a lesser extent,' a kernel that 'supplies desktop systems with better USB and FireWire support.'"
Don't even think about getting it this year ;-) Have you ever seen such a large project on schedule? .)
I thought this was all Linus' doing - in the LWN text, he says that Andrew is off for a couple of weeks so he may release a test11 before Andrew decides to take it on for release management...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
And also, it would violate the GPL and GNUs criteria for software freedom.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
Why are you running a test kernel on several PRODUCTION machines?
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
There's no doubt that 2.6 is going to be a winner.
;)
Performance is absolutely great.
There's no change in hell I will go back to 2.4 on my desktop.
Marry Christmas
I prefer better, even it it takes a bit longer.
"All good things come to those who wait."
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
It depends on the production, doesn't it? I mean, if you have a machine that collates addresses and prints mailing labels, then you can run with the test kernel and if it gives you better performance and works, who cares if it's "only for testing"? What's the problem?
But really, think about it.
In the past 9-10 years, windows has gone from 3.x to 95 and NT, to 2000, to 2003. In the same time, Linux has gone from 1.0 to (just about) 2.6
The biggest shift in windows-world was from 3.x to 9x / NT in 1995. Linux went from 1.2.x to 2.0 in 1996. Since then, we've had 2.2, 2.4, and 2.6, all of which have had improvements that would have qualified for major releases in windows.
Of course, Linux is a kernel, and windows is quite a bit heavier, so it's a case of tangerines and oranges.
There has been some tweaking of the kernel for market positioning and bug fixes, but no other major architectual overhauls. Everything else has been modifications to the window manger which is the equivilent to a new KDE or Gnome version. Let's not forget that M$ is impoverished comared to Linux.
That's why we have distributions, which can up the minor and major numbers whenever they like, or call themselves whatever flashy names the marketing people come up with. For example, there's Red Hat Linux (was, at leat), Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Advanced Server (?) and so worth. A newbie is unlikely to know or care about the kernel version anyway...
On the other hand, calling things by version number is much clearer for anyone who wants to upgrade/modify their system. If you had Linux ME and Linux XP, which one would be better ? On the other hand, if you have Linux 2.4 and Linux 2.6, the choice is pretty obvious.
BTW. I just have to ask. What kind of IT director decides based on flashy names, and not comparison by technical merit ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Those who are interested in such reports should read LKML. Let's keep slashdot for posts of general interest.
Depends what they're doing, and what the expected failure modes are. If you've already got a cluster of webservers, it might make perfect sense to throw a 2.6 machine into the pool. If it fails it'll only be one hit in every so many, and it's easy to pull out once this happens. Perhaps you could do something like run your ad server on a new machine. Even if it fails, customers don't think the site is down.
And from this, and from running tests on it, you know if 2.6 is going to offer you anything.
There are many applications where a production machine could go down and not cause more than a few seconds of service outage. No lost data, no long downtimes, etc. As long as you understand that this is a test and prepare an immediate failover machine.