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The 2.7 Kernel: Back To The Future For Linux

Posted by timothy on from the but-what-does-linus-want-in-it dept.

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."

24 of 437 comments (clear)

  1. Uhhh, where's the list? by Paladine97 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The article was ok and all, but where is the list of long awaited features???

  2. move along by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:move along by grmoc · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That is simple--

      One of the currencies of the open source movement is praise.

      Doing what people want is more likely to get you praise (and praised).

      Note, I did not say the only currency, I said 'one of the currencies.'

      Another way of putting it is that they get happy feelings from having people enjoy the fruits of their labors.

  3. What would be a great "desktop focus" by BizDiz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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).

    1. Re:What would be a great "desktop focus" by Cthefuture · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I want to second this opinion. One of my major problem areas with Linux has been the drivers or lack of.

      I know the die-hards will nay-say this, but being able to use native Windows drivers would be absolutely great. Now, maybe you don't use MPlayer (and the other "native" driver apps) but there are a hell of a lot of us that do and love it. The same thing should be done for all drivers. Video, USB, firewire, PCI, whatever... Make it so we can use Windows drivers in Linux because there are way too many half-assed reverse engineered Linux drivers that just don't work right. I mean, when in the hell will my Wacom Intuos2 tablet finally work correctly?! (I this is not just a kernel problem but XFree too) Yes, yes, I know about those patches here and there, but try to get them to work with XFree 4.3 and kernel 2.6... Ain't gonna happen. Just let me use the Windows drivers please.

      I don't give a crap about some utopian vison of Linux greatness because all manufacturers support Linux. It isn't happening any time soon and I have real work to do.

      With that said, my #1 greatist wish for 2.7/8 would be to get the damn SBP2 Firewire drivers working correctly. Dammit, that thing has been broken since it was introduced. Nearly every time I boot my system I have to plug and unplug the firewire cable (sometimes several times) to get the devices reset and loaded properly so I can access them (I'm using kernel 2.6, but has always been broken like this). The read/write/timeout errors have gotten better but they still occur with large drives. I'm absolutely terrified that one day I'll have to fschk my 90 GB partition on my firewire drive again. The last couple times I had to do that it toasted the partition every time (I/O errors and timeouts).

      --
      The ratio of people to cake is too big
    2. Re:What would be a great "desktop focus" by Cthefuture · · Score: 5, Insightful

      For one, I believe that much of the Windows driver API is an industry secret.

      Nah, get a MSDN subscription (or just the DDK). Not everyone that writes drivers works for Microsoft. The device developers kit contains everything you need to know.

      Second, people won't write Linux drivers anymore, and requests for native drivers will be responded with "You can just use the Windows drivers!"

      Frankly, I don't see a problem with that. If it works, it works. You're still running Linux. When enough people start using Linux then they can create real native Linux drivers. It will happen, given enough time. You can't just expect a company to drop everything to support some niche market where they won't make money or will lose money. We need a bridge, even if only temporarily.

      Third, Linux and Windows have very different driver models, meaning incompatibility and having to code it in bug-for-bug.

      Bah, there are so many crappy, incomplete, or just plain missing Linux drivers. Something is better than nothing. I have not noticed any superiority of any Linux driver over its Windows conterpart. The nVidia drivers are sometimes a bit faster in Linux but guess what? Those are made by the manufacturer not some wannabe college student Linux programmer. Not all the time, but very often the best software is a result of someone getting paid to write it. It works because they simply must finish it or they will get fired (or not payed). Plus generally the management listens to the customers (the users), and stuff gets done (enhanced or fixed) because money is at stake.

      Plus, how can you ensure that the Windows drivers won't trample over the Linux ones, or are you going to isolate them, reducing their effectiveness?

      It's just code. It's not that terribly complicated except for the undocumented Microsoft crap, but believe it or not, drivers have well defined interfaces. That's how all those 3rd parties create Windows drivers in the first place.

      However, an operating system kernel is not the place for untrusted code that depends on a lot of stuff working at the right time.

      Um... whatever, you want to eliminate all binary drivers? Sorry, but that isn't going to happen. Linux will always be behind if it doesn't allow binary drivers. Companies have to make a living.

      --
      The ratio of people to cake is too big
    3. Re:What would be a great "desktop focus" by WhiteDeath · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Back when I "upgraded" to XP, I found my scanner had NO drivers (and still doesn't), and my NVidia TNT2 (ASUS V3800) with video in/out had drivers, but the video in/out didn't work.

      I moved my scanner to my linux server and installed "sane". I installed "sane-twain" (free/OSS software) on my XP box, and it then accessed the scanner on the linux box quite happily. Some of the icons weren't as pretty as the windows driver, but all the same stuff was there.

      Later I installed a dual-boot setup on my workstation. I used XP less and less because it was so SLOW and getting slower - I don't install much new software once i get set up either - and yes, I ran AdAware and anti-virus software.

      Eventually, I only ever fired up windows to run Quickbooks. Now that I have Crossover Office installed, I don't even do that (crossover runs the native windows quickbooks just fine).

      A few weeks ago I used Partition Magic to downsize my XP partition (which I had done once before) to make more room for linux. My XP partition was 15GB with about 3GB spare, while Linux was 8GB with no spare.

      (un)fortunately, Partition magic trashed my XP partition..... so what did I do? stress? no... I just said "well, I don't use it, so why recover/re-install it? Partition Magic then proceeded to do a wonderful job deleting the XP partition and moving/resizing the Linux Ext3 partition. I now have a lovely 23GB linux partition with loads of free space. GNU parted provides similar capabilities on linux, though I have yet to check it out in person.

      The best thing, is that I have a WinRadio card. Winradio stopped developing their linux drivers shortly after releasing a working open-source driver a few years back. Someone started a sourceforge page and updated the original driver. They haven't done any work on it for almost a year, but i was still able to download it and with about a day's work yesterday, I have my winradio card working on kernel 2.6. (yes, I have contacted the sourceforge page owner about sending the updates so everyone can use it).

      Someone is going to say "but i can't write software so what good does that do me". My answer is that I don't write 99% of the software on my linux box. I just contribute where i can because i want to - it doesn't matter if I draw a few graphics, write code, make a web page, or do nothing at all, I can still use the work of people like myself.

      The best part is that I don't have to start from scratch - I don't have to start writing the driver all over again just because Winradio don't want to update the drivers for my old card, and won't give me the source code. (although to their credit winradio do provide a windows driver for XP, even for this, their oldest card) Another example is the NVidia drivers - the official ones don't support Kernel 2.6 yet, but due to the open source component (the core of the driver and GL code is closed source), I can get a 2.6 driver from a third party, who, just like myself, did it for himself and released the result to the public.

      Right now I have ALL my hardware working quickly and well, even though some of it is 5 or 6 years old, and ALL of it is 3+ years old, and I'm running the latest version of the OS.

      I just can't get that anywhere else.

      You're about to say "but I can't get drivers for the latest gadget". Well if the vendors followed the Winradio and NVidia examples, by releasing a linux driver, you wouldn't have that problem.

    4. Re:What would be a great "desktop focus" by groomed · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Uh, they don't want to release their proprietary information. Especially if it gives too much detail about their hardware when their market is very competitive (eg. video drivers).

      The CPU market is easily as competitive. But I'm still waiting for a CPU with a classified instruction set.

    5. Re:What would be a great "desktop focus" by John+Hurliman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      To provide an example of a superior driver in Linux, my D-Link DWL-650 (Intersil firmware). In Windows, with both the Microsoft and all versions of the D-Link driver I get frequent disconnects, I have to unplug and plug the card in sometimes several times to get a connection in the first place, CPU usage spikes severely when the connection is being made. In Linux I pop the card in, it blinks three times and I have a signal that doesn't drop until I move out of range. How about USB mice? In Windows I patiently wait while the hard drive grinds away and the system tray informs me I've plugged a mouse in, eventually letting me use it. In X11 it works no more than three seconds after plugging it in with no CPU spike. What about those horrible HP all-in-one drivers in Windows that are half driver and half system tray program, and a couple more processes in the system tray that are anyone's guess as to what their purpose is. The drivers have been released and re-released for months and months, every time fixing a nice bug like "prevents USB from randomly disconnecting" or "no longer floods the network with traffic" but yet it never gets to a point that doesn't make you want to throw it out the window. Unless you're running Linux, where CUPS handles it exactly like a printer should be handled, and the scanning is quick and efficient with SANE.

  4. Clustering by Neo-Rio-101 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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
  5. Who cares for 2.7 by Corfitz · · Score: 3, Insightful
    ... I'm pretty sure HURD will take over any day now (and make that GNU/HURD to satisfy everyone). Joke aside, I for one hope that some kind of simple clustering will be implemented in the new kernel (possibly even with some kind of load balancing). Its doable with the current kernel series but I'm drooling over all the simulations I would able to do in parallel at the University if all computers would join the cluster by default.

    --
    No bits were harmed during the production of this mail

  6. Pointless article by Theovon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That article was amazingly content-free.

  7. Re:One has to wonder by adrianbaugh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't see why the two are necessarily contradictory. After all, the bits to support enterprise class hardware can easily be omitted from compiling an embedded or desktop platform: if they can make a kernel with modular scheduler and tunable latency (which was the way it seemed to be heading with Con Kolivas' patch set) then the enterprise boys can increase the latency for minimum kernel CPU usage, the desktop people can knock it down for good responsiveness and the embedded folks can plug in an alternative scheduler to suit their own particular needs.

    --
    "'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
    - JRR Tolkien.
  8. Re:Dear Linus, by AnyoneEB · · Score: 1, Insightful
    For example, Windows 95 was named Windows 95 because it was released in 1995.
    What country do you live in? Windows 95 come out in 1996! (hence the name ~_^)
    --
    Centralization breaks the internet.
  9. Virutalization by Goyuix · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  10. Re:So roll your own kernel by Nothinman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Even if you are using a vendor kernel it doesn't matter because everything is modular, only modules for things you're using are loaded.

  11. Re:just some SATA support by ender81b · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Which brings up a good point for the 2.7 kernel. You might have better SATA support if they would actually freeze a kernel driver api.

    How about we stop politicizing the kernel and actualy make a stable Driver API? One that doesn't change with every point release of the kernel?

    I know that people want open source drivers but it's extremely hypocritical to complain about companies lack of support for linux then do absoultey *nothing* to help them out by changing the api every point release. Listen, besides some fanatics nobody cares about open source drivers. People would rather their stuff just work.

    I understand that, fundamentally, open source drivers are technically a better solution but there is no chance in hell of convincing Nvidia or any other company that has substantial IP and reserach in their drivers of publishing them open source. Same thing with Intel's Centrino drivers.

    Make a stable api darnit! :)

  12. Re:What I would like to see by Abcd1234 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Installing and un-installing device drivers would become much easier for users.

    Is insmod so difficult?

    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.

    Since when did we care? Linus has flat out said he doesn't like binary drivers, for pretty good reasons, I think (harder to debug being the main one). Why encourage this?

    So, any other good reasons why you'd want userland drivers? Are those reasons good enough to offset the additional overhead that this would incur (additional context switching,etc)? The new layers of indirection that would have to be added?

    Frankly, I think you might have been bitten by the microkernel bug. But, sorry, Linux ain't no microkernel. And, so far, it hasn't needed to be. So, why start now?

  13. Re:So roll your own kernel by bersl2 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It may not be true any longer, but some things work better when copiled into the kernel image itself. I think network cards fall into this catagory.

  14. Re:Maybe I'm not smart... by NonSequor · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I believe they mean something like this.

    In a setup like this you have one big machine running lots of copies of Linux or some other operating system with each in its own virtual machine. To manage all of this you have z/VM running on top. If I understand correctly, what they are talking about is being able to have Linux serve z/VM's role.

    Of course, at least half (possibly all) of this goes way over my head since I'm just a math guy who likes to fool around with computers sometimes.

    --
    My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
  15. Re:So... by Russ+Steffen · · Score: 2, Insightful
    but I think this is a case of "Don't attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity"

    Unfortunately the truly malicious are seldom stupid.

  16. Re:One Userland Improvement by burns210 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    KISS: keep it simple stupid...

    macos class(1-9 had a nice directory system, and i think it could be carried over in its simplicity to unix boxen)

    / /app/PROGRAM NAME /user/USERNAME /sys/

    99% of programs would install to /app/ with their own sub directory like /app/apache/ ..
    a user would have a /user/ subfolder, which would contain a user root directory(like the partitions root directory, but limited to the user... /user/NAME/ sys, doc, app, pub, etc... /sys/ would have standard libraries and other kernel and core system stuff.

    programs, system, documents. 3 basic categories... with a multi user system, you make documents become the user listing, and you have programs, system, userfiles

    3 directories, thats it.

  17. Re:Letterman's top ten by darketernal · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Frankly, that's like saying that we should eradicate every single disease on Earth.

    Kernel hackers are human, surprisingly. No kernel is perfect, look at even OpenBSD :)

    Although due to their very strict emphasis on security they haven't had many root exploits in the past. Linux doesn't follow that philosophy too carefully.

  18. poll on site with article by Jacek+Poplawski · · Score: 2, Insightful


    "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?