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The 2.7 Kernel: Back To The Future For Linux
Anonymous Coward writes "Now that the Linux 2.6 kernel has been released and is being worked into distributions, many in the open-source community are turning their attention to the next development and test kernel, known as the 2.7 tree. To get an early glimpse at some of the thinking going into the next kernel, key vendors that aid in shaping the Linux kernel helped eWEEK last week put together a long-range wish list for 2.7."
but the article is pretty vague and boring.
The article was ok and all, but where is the list of long awaited features???
There's a Microsoft ad on that page! Something about linux TCO.... Um, thanks. Don't need an ad for that.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
I go to read about the 2.7 Linux Kernel and I get an advertisement telling me that Linux costs 11%-22% more on average in 4 out of 5 workload scenarios... I immediately lost interest in the 2.7 kernel and just got angry at Microsoft.
So that is their plan... the whole Yoda "hate blinds" plot... darn they're good.
and I have yet to install 2.6.
that they remove all the SCO code this time. Maybe then it will fit on a floppy again.
What?
There is nothing specific about anything. What a useless article. You can say you want a milkshake with your 2.7 kernel and it be just as valid as the things mentioned.
Is just great driver compatability. That seems like the primary hurdle that can really keep people out, as well as a large area that is easily neglected in a more server-oriented mindset (especially in terms of user peripherals).
You could, you know, not just repeat the article.
Something that will autoconfigure the desktop (using voice commands of course, not this obsolete keyboard thing) while serving me a pint of Guinness at the same time...
Thoughts influence feelings. Feelings influence thought. Choose your thoughts wisely.
I have always felt that Linux is a nice operating system (for hobbyists and
geeks), but there are some areas where it is seriously lacking, especially when
compared to its main competitor, Microsoft? Windows?.
* File sharing. Windows has long been superior when it comes to making large
amounts of files available to third parties. Even early versions of Windows
automatically detected and made available all directories thanks to the built in
NetBIOS-powered file sharing support. But Microsoft has realized that this
technology is inherently limited and has added even better file sharing support
to its Windows XP operating system. "Universal Plug an Play" [slashdot.org] will
make it possible to literally access any file, from any device! I think
universal file sharing support needs to be built into the Linux kernel soon.
* Intelligent agents. With innovations like Clippy, the talking paperclip
[dmu.ac.uk] and Microsoft Bob, Microsoft has always tried to make life easier
for its customers. With Outlook and Outlook Express, Microsoft has built a
framework for developers to create even smarter agents. Especially popular
agents include "Sircam", which automatically asks the users' friends for advice
on files he is working on and the "Hybris" agent, which is a self-replicating
copy of a humorous take on "Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves" (the real story!).
Microsoft is working on expanding this P2P technology to its web servers. This
project is still in the beta stage, thus the name "Code Red". The next versions
will be called "Code Yellow" and "Code Green".
* Version numbers. Linux has real naming problems. What's the difference
between a 2.4.19 and a 2.2.17 kernel anyway? And what's with those odd and even
numbers? Microsoft has always had clear and sophisticated naming/versioning
policies. For example, Windows 95 was named Windows 95 because it was released
in 1995. Windows 98 was released three years later, and so on. Windows XP
brought a whole new "experience" to the user, therefore the name. I suggest that
the next Linux kernel releases be called Linux 03, Linux 04, Linux 04.5 (OSR1),
Linux 04.7B (OSR2 SP4 OEM), Linux 2005 and Linux VD (Valentine's Day edition).
Furthermore, remember how Microsoft named every upcoming version of Windows
after some Egyptian city? Cairo, Chicago and so on. I think that the development
kernels should be named after Spanish cities to celebrate Linux' Spanish
origins. Linux Milano or Linux Rome anyone?
* Multi-User Support. This has always been one of Microsoft's strong sides,
especially in the Windows 95/98 variants, where passwords were completely
unnecessary. Microsoft has made the right decision by not bothering the user
with a distinction between "normal" and "root" users too much -- practice has
shown that average users can be trusted to act responsibly and in full awareness
of the potential consequences of their actions. After all, if your operating
system doesn't trust you, why should you trust it? (To be fair, Linux is making
some progress here with the Lindows [lindows.com] distribution, where users are
always running as root.)
With Windows XP, Microsoft has again improved multi-user support. Not only
does Windows XP come with a large library of user pictures that are displayed on
the login screen, such as a guitar and a flower, it also has "quick user
change". This makes it possible to login as a different user with a simple
keyboard shortcut, and the good news is: programs from the old user keep running
in the background! Beat that, Linux!
* Programmability. Microsoft has always been known for making computer
machine power accessible to end users. The operating system comes with many
helpful tools such as VBScript, a programming language especially useful for
developing intelligent agents as mentioned above, and QBASIC, a truly innovative
"hacker" tool that makes it pos
Is there any reason why after all these years we don't have MPPE in a stock kernel? I always have to get a specially built kernel so that I can use pppd to connect to a MSFT/Windows VPN server. I use somebody else's build (deb http://www.vanadac.com/~dajhorn/projects/debian-pp tp woody main) which makes my life much easier, but it's not released as fast as the stock kernels.
I'm aware of projects such as The Hurd -- this seems to follow closely the unix philosophy, but it's a ways off from general usability. Others have noted that it's usually easier to debug a monolithic program than to debug communication problems between small unixy programs. (Maybe there is some way to make a communications chart of said small programs, so that it looks like monolithic code? )
Discuss.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Built in OpenMosix in the kernel would sound nice, at least it would keep Oracle happy with its push for Grid Computing. Better desktop support would also be great... they can start by making it easy for Linux to autodetect a USB joystick controller!
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I saw something about clustering support. Not much of a list. There's gotta be more than that. "Focusing on the desktop" does not make a list...it's too vague. Any specifics?
Then again, I suppose you're not going to get very specific on an e-week article.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all excited about 2.6 making the distros and then hearing about what awesome stuff they'll have on 2.7 -- but this article really just leaves me hanging.
It really needs some work.
After a frustrating weekend trying to get a High Point SATA card working in my Linux server, I'm putting better SATA support on the top my my wish list!
"We have nothing in common, your attitude annoys me, and your political views are appalling."
With so many people with their own agendas pushing and pulling at the kernel, and Linus being the steadfast leader he is, I can't help but think Linux may be headed for a fork in the not so distant future. Unless there is a way to make the kernel truly enterprise class as well as a responsive, low latency desktop system and a near real time embedded platform all at the same time.
I'm amazed (in the good way) the kernel devs have made it as versatile as they have to this point. Hats off to them and here's to hoping they can keep it up.
"Watch your cornhole, bud."
Of all the places to put an MS advert claiming Linux is "11-22% more expensive". I pity those who fall for this PR.
The ad du jour: Windows saved 11-22% over Linux in TCO in 4 out of 5 environments.
From the story: Amazon, which has been running Linux since 2000, has been steadily moving its infrastructure from Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Unix servers to Hewlett-Packard Co. ProLiant servers running Linux. The company said in a 2001 Securities and Exchange Commission filing that Linux cut its technology expenses by $16 million, or 25 percent.
I know the Amazon example is in comparison to Solaris; but still... I felt like stoking the fire.
That's still the idea. When they say "putting new stuff in the kernel," they really mean "new options that you *can* compile into the kernel." Don't like Ham radio support in your kernel? Don't compile it in. Same for multiprocessor support, or virtualization support, or whatever the hell they throw in that you happen not to want.
That's the beauty. Now - you *are* compiling your own kernels, right? Cuz if you blindly use whatever default kernel RedHat or whoever throws at you, that's not so good maybe. ;)
Not much infomation in the article but I must admit it would be nice to start having SAN/Cluster filesystems as part of stock kernels. People realy dont understand the power of these filesystems to provide security and scaleability. With modern cluters inconnects being able to serve up fiber channel multigigabit ethernet and low latency interconnects it gets easier and easier to make pure diskless compute nodes that are for more than just number chrunching.
Think about only needing a single copy of your web server image mounted read only to the web servers themselves.
Setting up CAD farms that all utilize direct attached storage in a shared method leaving network bottlenecks behind.
Low end systems like firewire may even be able to attach single disks between multiple machines with similtanious access (have to check on multi initiator firewire looks posible never seen a definate though) in a safe manner.
No sir I dont like it.
The 2.6 kernel included a lot of stuff to give better consumer hardware support and make interactive applications more responsive. Characterizing it as a server release is Just Plain Wrong, despite the enhancements for scalability.
Besides, if virtualiation is the big feature of 2.7/2.8, that is much more of a server feature than a consumer feature. Sounds to me like 2.7 will be the server development series, and 2.6 the desktop release.
there's at least a regedit utility.
I mean, come on, as a windows hacker I can get upto all sorts of no good but I guess Linux is just too much of a black box for me to find out whats going on inside.
And besides I don't even know if Linux will run on my e-machine.
2.7 does not exist and shouldn't be on anyone's mind until Linus says so. At some point, probably around the time of 2.6.5 to 2.6.10 Linus will decide that 2.6 is pretty darn stable and that the ultra hackers of the kernel can turn their attention back to major new developments in the kernel rather than refining and debugging. 2.6.x will become 2.7.0 and the patching and crashing and data corrupting will begin. Until that time 2.7 doesn't exist. So get back to work on debugging 2.6 you lazy slugs!!!
Will there be support for my orbiting brain lasers in the 2.7 series?
--
No bits were harmed during the production of this mail
A web browser and a media player would make 2.7 a killer kernel.
I've read and re-read the article. Other than a couple of vague references, there is no list there at all.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
"Some basic clustering support would be nice. That is not going to get into 2.6, as there's no framework for it. I'm talking about the notion of having a cluster name, clusterwide time stamps.."
Can someone please, once and for all, define clustering and how the heck the kernel has anything to do with it? From a distributed computing perspecting, obviously kernel support is requird; MPI, MOSIX, OpenMosix, etc. But a cluster of webservers? How does the kernel have any impact on the ability for apache to load balance between daemons? That sounds more like a userspace proc.
What do they mean "clustering framework"?
I would like to see less things in the 2.7 kernel than in the 2.6 kernel. Getting device drivers, network drivers, etc, out of the kernel core and into modules was a step forward, but I think the next step forward would be to get these things out of the kernel entirely, and into userland. That would give Linux a huge advantage over Microsoft Windows. Installing and un-installing device drivers would become much easier for users. Manufacturers would like this too because then there would be less concern about GPL and device drivers. It would be easier to release binary-only drivers.
That article was amazingly content-free.
Interesting that CA is pushing for inclusion of a kernel auditing facility in 2.7. That sort of functionality, required in a number of federal contexts, is already available in a Linux-compatible, GPL'ed code base, from Intersect Alliance down in Australia. The Snare project patches the Linux kernel with auditing instrumentation, making it possible to detect abnormal system call activity that other methods don't.
Solaris has had something like this for a long time in the form of BSM, as had Windows. Even Mac OS X has preliminary BSM support in Mac OS X Panther. It would be very great to see this kind of functionality as a config option on the Linux kernel, and hopefully sooner rather than later.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
It was a completely pointless article. Obviously one of the Slashdot editors saw an article about Linux 2.7 and fell over themselves posting it fast enough without even seeing that it was complete fluff and devoid of anything informative.
I want filesystem priorities. A background task that is grinding the hard drive, should only do so when a high priority task isn't using the drive, or when its data is adjacent to the high priority data the head is next to anyway.
Some sort of cluster file system is necessary for distibuted and fault tolerant applications but the commercial ones are expensive, and Oracle's free one is quite lame by any standards. Red Hat recently acquired Sistina Software (of Logical Volume Manager fame) which makes a commercial CFS. Red Hat has also been working closely w/Oracle to make sure RHEL is certified by the database vendor. Oracle clustering requires some sort of CFS. All of this leads me to believe that an excellent CFS will be in the next kernel sooner rather than later.
I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed...
They mentioned the word in passing, but I think for the kernel to provide this will be a huge benefit on many levels - and immediate benefits could be seen in projects like udev and the HAL stuff that is going on.
Besides, machines are getting to resemble the big iron of yesterday enough that you can (and a large number of people do) run multiple OS's on a single machine. Having an underlying architecture to better support those goals would be a great thing.
To a certain degree, it is like the evolution from a shared memory space to a virtual memory space - one of the greatest features was protection. Virtualize the entire OS (wow!) and you can run your different server apps on the same machine without the risks of one nuking the other.
Emulation has a ton of cool things going on right now. With a swift boost from an OS designed to virtualize the hardware it would make it trivial to have multiple copies of the OS running at very near full speed with complete access to the hardware.
Linux sucks. No apps, crappy GUI, poor programming and lawsuit after lawsuit to determine "who owns it". Fuck that. OS X rules the world, kiddies. It is faster, far more advanced and closed source, so you know that there are paid, professional programmers standing behind it. Face it, kids, Linux is for hobbyists with more time on their hands than sense. People who are interested in getting actual work done use OS X.
But does it run l... never mind.
The article really does not say very much at all... looks like it was a ploy to rub linux users' faces in it with that m$ ad.....
Today windows is plagued with viruses, trojans and worms. If Linux usage becomes more wide spread among users with little knowledge in computers, networks and security, we might see similar problems in Linux in the future. The fact that Linux is a much better acrhitecture than windows will probably not be enough to protect Linux from incompetent users.
To prevent this, it would be nice if some kind of sandboxing technology was implemented. E.g it could be based on digital signature technologies, where applications could be given capabilities depending on who signed them. That way an adminstrator could allow only applications signed by approved vendors or himself to run on the system.
Apart from raising the security in Linux it could, provided it is done right, also make it clear to users that DRM technologies a la Microsot is there to provide security for the content provider, not the user. That is if Linux in reality was just as secure as MS technology is in theory, nobody would accept hardware locking users out of their own system.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
...hardware detection. the boffins at the top secret Linux dev HQ could write their own lib(or fork kudzu,discover etc etc) which probes your hardware, tells you what its found, and if you accept the softwares proposal, it would write you a .config file.
also, a section at the start of menuconfig called "Basic Features" would be nice. in it would be things like:
DVD Support: Y/N
Clicking yes would then enable all options in the kernel which are need for watching/wring dvd.(UDF filesystem, MTRR, DMA etc etc).
if later on in picking your kernel modules, if you try to unselect a requrement(like UDF filesystems), you'd get a prompt saying this is needed for such and such a reason.
This would help quicken the process of getting a stock kernel for a desktop built by the noobs.
i wish i was but oh well
Seems M$ knows where to advertise... I wonder if they'll sue me for copyright infringement because that image has their name in it..
One thing Linux really needs to have to become a mass successful desktop system (besides improved X server) is *easier* hardware support. In windows you plug it in, you're good to go a lot of the time. This has gotten a lot better in Linux, but it still has a ways to go imo.
So, does this mean that we might be seeing 2.2 in Debian by the time 2.8 is released?
Okay, so maybe I am a troll, but I'm also a proud debian used on four architechtures!
How about (proper) support of multiple USB keyboards and mice? Combine that with multiple video cards, and you can easily share a PC among users without dealing with X terminals.
"In fact, Dargo contends that a 2.7 wish list from each of the vendors would reflect their particular technology interests and that there will be different wishes from the different groups within those companies."
Wow! You mean, each vendor says what features they would like, and those features might be included in the next kernel? How horrible! Next, we'll be deciding on who gets into government by writing their name down on a peice of paper, and whoever gets the most pieces of paper wins! Egads!
My personal wishlist:
- framebuffer device screensavers (From xscreensaver?)
- Customizable PC speaker beeps
- Better ARCnet support
- Loopback ROT13 encryption support
- Support for my IBM PC-RT as I can't find ANY OS to run on it
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Shared everything storage/filesystems, transparent cluster wide (NUMA) memory access, transparent process migration.
Now what would be seriously cool though is complete node transparency, all the individual nodes acting as a single machine. I believe the Amoeba project tried to do this, and Mosix also looks like a good start but I don't know if it's really been done properly.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
lmao the fact that you neglected to mke the hyperlink clickable made me spit at my monitor in laughter.
If it wasn't for the fact that OS X is barely out of the diapers and now a childish UNIX-wannabe who can't accept the fact it's just another BSD fork you might a point, albeit a tiny one.
Did you know uCLinux, once a project fork, got adopted into the main kernel during 2.5? Do you know what uCLinux is for? Running Linux on microcontrollers that don't have memory management units. It's for systems that run completely out of physical RAM with no memory protection.
You see, there are systems for which the power, heat, cost, weight and space of an MMU would be objectionable.
I'm concerned about how the Linux kernel can continue to serve everyone's disparate needs. If the uCLinux folks are running Linux on an ARM7TDMI chip that's smaller than a postage stamp, are they going to be able to use code from the same project that's running a cluster of Oracle databases on a cluster file system?
Another concern I have is old hardware. Will 2.7 still run well on old boxes that would otherwise be destined for the landfill?
One of the great strengths that Linux has always had is that it runs great on hardware that's too slow to run Windows or (nowadays) Mac OS on. My PowerMac 8500 was once one of the fastest desktop computers money could buy, but now its 150 Mhz PowerPC 604 is too slow to run Mac OS X. Linux, however, runs great and it has been serving as an IP masquerading gateway, file server and all-around Linux desktop box.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Kernel 2.6 is server oriented.
2.7 (will be 2.8) wil be designed for the Desktop.
When will 2.7 be stable enough for a 2.8 kernel?
My guess is that there will be a 2.8 kernel aproxamatly 23 months after the first 2.7 kernel is released - (this is based on the average time frame for the last 3 kernels from the first release).
Should I slap on the "2005" or "2006" sticker for my "year of the linux desktop" calander? (or should I hold my breath?)
You are confusing me with someone who cares.
I agree that we should build a 2.7 kernel leading to a 2.8, but I also think that a 2.9 leading to 3.0 should be started, with the idea of cleaning up some of the ugly stuff that may have started to creep in there. With a 3.0 version the emphasis should not be on compatibility as much as on speed, security and features. It may break compatibility, and there may be a need to a layer to keep some older programs working, but I think that a version started now that really pushes for some reworking at all levels, from the ground up would be a good thing for the future of the operating system.
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
how can you kill the firstborn of a virgin?
There was some things about what other companies wanted, since it is starting to be taken on by large companies now. It said something about IBM wanting visualization support, whatever that means, but it didn't really sound like anybody expected to actually get anything they wanted.
dont waste even 3 minutes reading that article. I love e-week btw. heres the article people want virtualization support in the kernel.
Going to this article, I found an animated advertisement right near the top leading to this page, all saying how Linux costs companies 11% more by a study, and clicking on it could get you the facts.
Of course, the details are on Microsoft's page, advertising their Windows Server software, so anyone who believes the numbers outright isn't fit to buy software for their company.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
Oh yea, there was also something about Computer Associates contributing code to allow you to watch the processes real-time for security purposes.
Man...I don't know where to begin.
First off, on the Linux-on-the-Desktop bit...umm...that has nothing to do with the Kernel. Second...Go get Mepis, install it, and voila! linux on the desktop, all nice and pretty and just as easy to use as windows - more so, if you tweak the menus and icons to make obvious exactly what does what - "AIM Client," "Web Browser," etc. Linux. IS. Ready.
It's just that no one knows it yet.
Second off, for applications that arent' "l33t" like mozilla. well..just use mozilla...without all the neat tabbing, yadda yadd. No one said you had to use tabbed browsing. You cant' tell me that Evolution isn't a decent Outlook clone either.
if only this was the last time anyone ever had to point out that linux was ready to be an office, Secretary-can-use-it system. Or, if you want, Mom-can-use-it system.
Now, if it only had every little app that windows has...
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
Mods? +5, Insightful, please?
Is why the hell is my 2.6 kernel 1.4Gb????
They need to a standardize on a graphics API. I would say OpenGL, and not X.
OpenGL comes supported by the hardware guys, and X windows actually could be written on top of it, so that you don't need a new X server for each hardware revision. Harware accelerated anti-aliased alpha blended window manager running at 100fps. It's very doable. And, it'll be used by non-windowing devices (like game-boxes) that don't need X-windows.
This helps installation ease of use: Define the interface spec, and let the hardware vendors build on top of that, rather than defining the hardware spec, and writing device drivers for each indivdual hardware that desktop users have to go seek out and download.
The API spec should also be defined for other parts of the desktop. We shouldn't have to define individual ethernet drivers- it should just be one ethernet driver that all the hardware guys design their device around. Same for audio and other desktop functions.
If they're successful they'll be able to throw away all previous device drivers going forward into 3.0 or 3.2. If not, then they have to have device driver maintainers for the kernel.
We should make the desktop as easy to use as a game-box.
You can get the source from www.kernel.org.
You're welcome to modularize the scheduler policy yourself.
I imagine you'd want this to be a compile-time option, and not a module though. It'd be difficult to schedule the loading of the scheduler module...
Good luck getting your patches accepted.
for the convenience of all of our customers who are watching their mental calorie intake.
Nice ideas and all, but what's it got to do with the kernel? :)
Um. We have this already, right? You can run linux virtually in linux, to do just as you describe iin paragraph 3. You can run any kind of emulator for other OS's to run on. What else would you want again?
"..complete access to the hardware..."
That's the point of virtualization, etc. Access to the hardware breaks the security part of virtualization and emulation. If you can access memory just like you were the original operating system, then you ARE the operating system, and you can trash anything and everything running.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
Sorry about ACing, but I can't rember my user name and password.
;-)
Any, techie question, Can you make certain devices on an install usable by only certain users? I mean amoungst over things, radio card, the sound card etc?
Is it just a question of vhanging the permissions on the devices?
Sorry if I'm being dumb, but it's getting late
I would like to see something in the nature of a area where all executable commands for any user software get put into.. Many programs today install theirselves into various /usr /usr/share /usr/local it just goes on and on. Reguardless of where the program installs itself I think a top level directory /usr/software where all programs put in a link back to it's working directory and main executable for all programs..
/usr/software and it makes it easier for plugin/mod authors to know where things are.
:) where people now know their programs (With very few exceptions) now end up.
That way all users know that their programs reside in
Either way if this is not feasable then it's time to standardize where things are going.. Windows has it's Program Files which went a long way towards fixing user confustion
From a MS ad embeeded in the article:
"Windows Server 2003 offers a savings of 11-22% over Linux in 4 out of 5 workplace scenarios."
From the text of the article:
"The company said in a 2001 Securities and Exchange Commission filing that Linux cut its technology expenses by $16 million, or 25 percent."
Whatever it is I'm complaining about, I'm sure the Republicans did it. This is
they can start by making it easy for Linux to autodetect a USB joystick controller!
Knoppix detected my Saitek P880 just fine. Chuck these somewhere appropriate:
modprobe hid
modprobe joydev
Or just use your favorite means to load hid and joydev at startup. It isn't that hard.
While I'm at it, I'll point out that at least some mobos that support USB 2.0 also have a USB 1.1 controller crosswired to the same physical USB ports. You need to have both ehci and ohci/uhci drivers loaded for these. The ASUS P4S800 is one such board. Both ehci and ohci drivers must be loaded. The machine will use the appropriate driver depending on the usb device plugged into the port.
Just get MEHPIS, install it and viola! U have a nice Desktop Linux system! I installed it on my Toshiba Laptop, (which numorous attempts to install other distro's failed miserably) and it runs perfectly!
Is it just me or is this exactly the type of barrier that Linux needs to get over before it can "move to the desktop?" I'd venture a guess that a good billion or so of the world's people running Windows on their desktop don't even know what a kernel is... let along how to compile one... or configure modules...
The /one/ thing that has to be added.
Code that can be added without recompiling the kernel, i mean who other then geeks wants to recompile their kernel every time they forget to say add support for .
Screw 2.6, we want more crashes, more debugging. Everyone in their right mind is rushing after 2.7!
Sure, but it wasn't really informative. About 4 ideas were suggested, and a lot of effort was put into making sure we knew who the players were. I still haven't figgured out what amazon.com wants, but they get a couple paragraphs.
What is going to happen? I still don't know after reading this. Well I can make a couple of guesses. Some clustering support. a couple other things. Not everyone wants all of the above.
I gaurentee that a lot more will go into 2.7 than the above. This gives me no clue as to what though. It was a waste of time reading that artical.
- Binaries meant for normal users go in to
/usr/bin, unless they're part of the base system, in which case they go in to /bin. If they're part of XFree86's special playground, then they go in to /usr/X11R6/bin, but that's really an ugly holdover more than anything.
- Binaries for administrators go in to
/sbin or /usr/sbin
- Shared libraries go in to
/usr/lib or /lib, depending on how close to the base system it is. Sometimes they put their own subfolder in /usr/lib, but not as often.
- Executables meant just for the app and not the user, as well as images, sounds, etc go in to
/usr/share/appname
- Documents go in to
/usr/share/doc/
- System-wide config files go in to
/etc
This is all really well established, and I'd be surprised if all the major dists didn't follow it. It's not really that complex, especially when normal users really only have to know about"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Use OpenVPN instead - a breeze to install, secure, interoperable, etc.
-- Faré @ TUNES.org
Reflection & Cybernet
I go to read about the 2.7 Linux Kernel and I get an advertisement telling me...
Firebird + Adblock
Problem solved...
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Totally freezing the API would be quite impractical, since lots of compatibility kludges (which means difficulty in maintaining the code) must result, and kernel developers strongly dislike such things. I just hope there'll be some way to make sure that when the API or semantics of an exported symbol changes, instructions are given about how to upgrade the code calling them. Maybe put the compatibility layer inside a comment.
The kernel build system is what it is. I'm saying that any attempt to simplify this process falls to the distro to do. Unless they want to standardize this. All I'm saying is that Linus has decided on make *config* to configure the kernel, and that no one should ask Linus to make it.
Of course, in retrospect, I think I misinterpreted the phrase "top secret Linux dev HQ" to be with respect to the kernel; you probably meant an arbitrary distro by that.
2.6 is a server release?!?
/dev stuff is cool but that's neither server- nor desktop-specific. The IO rewrites were a big thing but only kernel developers really care about that.
The biggest feature in 2.6 is the massive improvement in scheduler performance focused mainly on DESKTOP use. This is the version that will stop the choppy mouse movements and sounds that newcomers to Linux hate so much.
Basically everything else in 2.6, while nice, is just cleanup and added hardware support (drivers). The virtual
The author of the article was both wrong and boring.
-- laws are the opinions of politicians --
Read the RT of the fucking FA. There is too much SCO code to remove all at once. It will probably be completely gone by 2.8 or 2.9.
And #1 on that list is... Paul, can we get a drum roll?
#1- get rid of those damn, damn, r00t exploits!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
This may come off as overly aggressive, and for that I apologize in advance, but people who haven't adminstrated *nix boxes in large-scale deployments often fail to recognize that there's a delibrate method behind the file system.
/bin, /usr/bin, and /usr/local/bin may seem trivial to you as a user, but from an administrative vantage point, they are very important.
/bin, /sbin, and /lib. That means that all tools necessary for fixing the system must be there including all kernel modules and shared libraries. It must also be possible for this device to be completely read-only, possibly even residing in firmware. Installing an application in /bin while its companion libraries are on /usr/lib would be folly since the /usr partition may be completely inaccessible. You may notice that some distributions install a stripped-down, statically-linked version of vi in /bin and a full-featured, shared-library version in /usr/bin. Now you know why.
/lib, the remaining partitions can be mounted. On a single-user machine, the /usr directory may be on the same partition as root. Often times it has its own partition. But for large-scale deployments, the entire /usr partition may be on a network share. It may also be on a CDROM. Installing software to /usr may be impossible or require a site-wide change. Secondly, it won't do to have software trying to write data to this partition, so programs and data are always separated. All data goes to /var which is normally a machine-specific mount. Also, a diskless machine may mount /var on a ram disk.
/usr/local directory. If /usr is read-only, /usr/local is mounted to a separate writeable volume. All software not packaged by the distributor or site administrator belongs in /usr/local if it's machine-wide and in the user's home directory if not. Other conventions exist, including the use of /opt, but that's a site policy issue.
/bin, /usr/bin, or /usr/local/bin. Libraries go to the equivalent lib directory. Header files to the equivalent include directory. Manual pages to man. Cross-application data to share. All application data goes to /var including log files and databases. All temporary files go to /tmp. If you follow these rules, there's no end to the configurations you can create. Violate any single rule and you have a machine that cannot be recovered, applications that cannot be shared site-wide, machine-wide, or between users, and data that cannot be conveniently backed up. Sorta like Windows.
/usr/software/netscape won't help if the installer is looking for /usr/software/mozilla. This class of problem has been solved many times over with package configuration files and scripts. The responsibility is mainly that of the distribution maintainers to facilitate this. If it's not happening for your distro, get satisfaction, or move to a distro that cares.
Each one of those directories has a very distinct purpose; it didn't happen that way by accident. The difference between
In single user mode with an ailing system, the most you may successfully get booted is the root partition. You have at your disposal only
Once booted and all the necessary kernel modules are loaded from
To address software installed on individual machines, we use the
So that's that. Given any package, it is a simple matter to determine if its executables go to
You specifically address the issue of plug-ins, but even having an application located at
That said, the browser plug-in issue annoys me, too.
-Hope
I find that firebird's adblock is not nearly as good as mozilla's userContent.css driven one.
Firebird will often show adds, and then sometimes remove them, sometimes not. Mozilla, while being a bitch and a half to configure, works every time.
'course, the mozilla scheme should work with firebird. I dunno why adblock doesn't seem to work as well.
... I would describe the advertisement taking up 20% of the page.
Anywho, exhilarating news regarding the anticipated desktop focus!
Give way, Micro$oft!
Hot Swappable processor support (obviously on 2+ processor systems), hot swappable memory support (obviously on systems with more than 1 stick of memory). Better system-within-a-system support (currently you can run Linux under Linux). Clusters would be nice. At some point, SOC systems will come along, at which point support for that will need to be put in. Selectable schedulers would be nice too (although that is too much bother for most people).
"With a new Mozilla released, is the browser war back?
I'm sticking with Internet Explorer
I'm giving Mozilla a second chance
The browser war?"
What a dumb poll, what a dumb site. What should I choose if I am NOT using IE at all?
Maybe there are better sites to put articles about Linux Kernel than that one?
There used to be a cluster fs for windows called Mango - but that's now obsolete thanks to Win2003, which clusters. But Linux can't access that as far as I know. So there is a middleman - Coda. Coda is a clustered file system for use with WinNt/Win95/Linux and is already in the kernel as far as I know. Just clearing up the hole that appears to be at the bottom of the article (really... it's been in since 2.4!)
WFM. Are you sure you're using the latest Adblock extension in Firebird?
Cant you get the GTK installed on your university computers and use spare cycles that way? Saves waiting for OS changes, though you do need Grid-enabled applications.
this is not insightful - it's a rant.
freezing the API would have detrimental effects on the kernel.
changing the API has one detrimental effect - driver maintenance. there are plenty of people willing to maintain well used drivers to keep up with API changes. but of course they can't do this for closed source ones, so they break.
Gconf is one of the screwups in GNOME. the whole pointless XMLififcation, a million small files.
:(
libPropList was hugely better
Heh, the GNU Hippie mods couldn't handle the truth. MOD PARENT BACK UP, YOU DIRTY COMMUNISTS!
Note: I'm not the parent AC
Unfortunately the truly malicious are seldom stupid
I don't think the truly malicious are any smarter than average. I believe you're mixing numbers up with results. Just like the well-meaning people are both brilliant and stupid - but you hear about the brilliant ones because they're the ones making the really big achievements.
In the same way, you hear about those that are both malicious and brilliant because they achieve the greatest destruction - a thug might be just as malicious, but the teeth he punched out and kneecaps he broke will hardly get him world fame. For good or bad, smart beats stupid.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The parent is insightful in so many ways. I agree completely.
You must explicitly compile in support for removing modules in order to be able to do it, and last time I checked, it wasn't on by default. What's nice is that there's also an option to allow forcibly removing a module ("...mostly used by developers or desperate users.")
/boot partition (I have a weird disk setup) than perhaps I should have. Remember when you could actually still use "make zimage"?
/lib/modules lives on as modules :) Unless you set up initrd, of course.
I like to compile a modular kernel as well, especially since I've left myself a smaller
Just remember, kids: never compile drivers needed to access the filesystem
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
OS X's a mach fork. OS X has BSD apps, with a mach kernel. You wouldn't call Windows a *BSD because it has a *BSD-based FTP client, would you?
I have complete understanding for why companies don't want to release some of their drivers, particularly when their drivers are doing a lot of "magic".
But what I fail to understand is why it is mostly impossible to get the specs - the hardware interface. At least give the chance to the OSS community to develop an alternate driver of their own, containing nothing of the original IP.
Unless the hardware interface ITSELF is secret, but frankly I don't see the big point of that. It should be pretty basic to find what is done in hardware, and what is emulated in software anyway.
There's no doubt that a lot of the reason Linux drivers don't work sometimes is that they're completely reverse-engineered without documentation.
Listen, besides some fanatics nobody cares about open source drivers. People would rather their stuff just work.
I think the word "drivers" is redundant. But Linux is evolving because of those fanatics, not despite them. To create popular demand pressuring companies to make their hardware work under Linux, rather than pressuring Linux devs to conform is the right way to go.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
in windows, put this file in 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc'. for linux, it goes in '/etc'
the real trick is changing the 'action canceled' message into a plain-white (or your favorite bgcolor) page so blocked ads show up as a color patch instead of a text message...
credit where credit is due, i did not create this file. i downloaded it pretty much how it appears (but from where i can't remember)
Wave upon wave of demented avengers March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream
bsd fork
PAX / RSBAC are crucial to Linux's survival. However they will not make it a standard. It will hurt the Linux security a lot in overall. :-(
LSM is missing 99% of the required hooks to do anything useful and even with the hooks can't do everything required.
Internal matters within the developers (RedHat is pushing for their own 2nd class Pax clone, some other company and people are against RSBAC) are REALLY hurting Linux right now. Very, very sad to see.
Although the article doesn't say a whole lot, I've got to agree with the whole need for clustering thing. Although there is some clustering software that runs *on top* of Linux, two Linux separate kernels on two separate CPU's on two separate motherboards have yet to be able to share the same SCSI bus. I'm talking VMS-style clustering. DEC handled most of that stuff in the kernel.
I know the focus has been on the desktop lately, but that stuff is largely not a concern to kernel folks. It really has nothing to do with Linux at all - so why does it keep cropping up in discussion about Linux? Frankly, I could care less what kernel underlies my GNU, X11 and KDE or GNOME as long as the hardware interfacing, scheduling and memory management are good.
Linux's thing-going-for-it right now is hardware interfacing. Linux probably supports more pieces of hardware than any other kernel, including the NT kernels and UNIX kernels. If that could be cluster-abstracted, it would be a beautiful thing.
As for compiling the kernel at all, it's mainly speed - things compiled on YOUR system tend to be faster than things generically compiled. Good God man, are you installing binary programs too???
Along those lines, if I'm never going to need something, I don't need it as a module either. So all that crap I check "no" on the kernel configuration menu. Getting rid of all those damned modules speeds up how much time it takes me to
when I rebuild the kernel.Second, there are things that run better when actually compiled in. In addition, I've found that things give me fewer configuration errors when compiled in to the kernel than left as modules. That said, if I have the choice, I'll leave something as a module if I have no reason not to, simply to keep the kernel nice and light. Basically, it's not so much a question of whether something should be a module or compiled, but whether it should be hanging around at all.
These things do make a difference. There's a reason why different Linux distros out of the box run at significantly varying speeds on the same machine. I'm not going to start a flame war here, so let's just say I enjoy smoking a pipe. ;)
i don't know if it would be possible but it'd be really cool to have the java virtual machine built into the kernel.
I think a lofty goal for the next 'major' rewrite, like 3.0, should be to completely reorganize the driver architecture.
I've said this before, but the kernel should implement some 'model' of storage, maybe adopt the SCSI command set. All storage devices, be they FireWire, USB, ATA, SATA, ATAPI, SCSI, Fibre-Channel, whatever, should 'filter' out what functions of the available storage commands they don't support. A drive is a drive is a drive, and they should all be attacked from the same place in the kernel. This might even make it faster and easier to add support for new storage technologies as they become available.
I can think of other sections that could use work too. the NFS client and server will have to be boosted to v4.
I want 'intelligent serial output buffering' for storage, I think the output buffers could be 'decoded' by the filesystem and storage drivers and reorganized by a small 'optimizer task' before output to disk, the optimizer would schedule the actual head movements of the disk to happen in a more organized fashion (i.e. 'I've got it, but I'm holding off until I clear the activity on this area of the disk').
I want intelligent precaching, the kernel communicates with a small access-logger, eventually it learns that when 'mozilla-bin' gets loaded, 'libgtk' and 'libnss' are coming up next and frontloads them into the disk cache.
I want the kernel folks and the XFree folks to sit down and decide on a way to make interface devices of all sorts interface SEAMLESSLY, even if it means writing a new 'bridge' and extending the protocol or something. X shouldn't crash when I plug a second mouse in.
I'd like to see a NEW network file system, not NFS, not SMB, something NEW and simple and clean, it would probably be userland though. And I want whoever makes it to also make a Windows driver for it so we can make Windows boxen 'play on our terms'. If it really was good I'm sure OS X would jump onboard, and there'd be a universal network file system.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
OpenGL works the other way around... The way OpenGL is designed works very well with X, host/client separation is actually part of the OpenGL spec. (but is a foriegn topic on implementations such as Windows uses).
If X sat on top of OpenGL we'd be moving a couple steps backwards... It is possible to implement OpenGL without using X on UNIX environments, but it just doesn't make sense. X provides some of the most important functionality you need to interface with OpenGL, render context, viewport, extension loading, etc... You'd have to write implementation specific methods for all this stuff otherwise.
You're going to need an OpenGL driver for every hardware revision, in pretty much every case, these vendors also provide a general X server driver as well. Nothing would really change if X ran on top of some sort of OpenGL layer.
I just use the "flash click to play" plugin. It lets me know there is a flash there without it playing unless I want it to.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?