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2.4 vs 2.6 Linux Kernel Shootout

Posted by michael on from the bang-bang dept.

FyRE666 writes "Infoworld are currently running an interesting comparison of the 2.4 series kernel against the new 2.6 release on Xeon, Opteron and Itanium CPUs with some surprising benchmark results for common server-related tasks. Basically the new scheduler helps the 2.6 kernel to cream the old 2.4: Samba tests showing up to 73% speed increases, MySQL showing up to 29% and Apache serving dynamic content up to 47% faster!"

102 of 533 comments (clear)

  1. Error by popa · · Score: 5, Informative

    tried to get this in before you posted it... but dynamic only went up 22% for apache.... static went up 47%

  2. And SCO shows... by Black+Parrot · · Score: 4, Funny


    ...a stunning 129% increase on SPEClawsuit!

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  3. Okay, so that's with the latest and greatest.. by spitefulcrow · · Score: 3, Interesting

    But how much of an improvement does it get on older hardware and/or software packages?

    --
    Sorry, my karma just ran over your dogma.
    1. Re:Okay, so that's with the latest and greatest.. by mcbridematt · · Score: 2, Informative

      I tried 2.6.0-test8 when I had my Dual PII box a few months ago. Performance difference for KDE between it and my 800@920MHz spitfire Duron was pretty much unnoticeable. Recommended for older boxes.

      Also, for a more current comparison:

      distributed.net rc5-72 Duron 1.4@ 1.9 (2400+) w/256kb l2 cache mod:

      Windows: 5,500-6,000/sec
      Linux 2.4.20-debian: 3,400-3,700/sec
      Linux-2.6.1-rc1: 5,500-6,000/sec.

      The upgrade to Linux-2.6 is worth it.

    2. Re:Okay, so that's with the latest and greatest.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The 2.6 kernel has made one of my desktop machines a pain to use. Music skips, windows don't refresh fast, etc. This is on a memory starved system, so the VM is getting heavily utilized. 2.4 provided a much more responsive desktop on this machine, an AMD1600 with 256M ram. I am not sure why this occurred, and haven't had time to investigate it...

  4. drugs are bad by POds · · Score: 5, Funny

    Okay, who's been feeding 2.6 speed?

    --


    Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
    1. Re:drugs are bad by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Funny

      Okay, who's been feeding 2.6 speed?

      IBM, according to SCO.

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  5. May try it then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was wondering about upgrading to 2.6 from 2.4 with XFS on my box, with the improvements to SCSI support and the CPU speed ups it sounds promising :D

    Then again BSD is very nice on the same hardware. Wonder how 2.6 linux & (free)BSD compare for those tasks.

    1. Re:May try it then by anthonyrcalgary · · Score: 4, Informative
      Try them both to see which one is faster/you like more. And don't listen to anyone who tells you not to try the alternatives, they're probably zealots.

      Don't let my sig fool you, I like Gentoo better on the desktop. It's just that little bit more convenient to get the latest everything.

      Some stuff I can tell you:
      • With ULE enabled on FreeBSD 5.2, I can't tell the difference. No formal benchmarks, but I did everything I could to expose stuff that might annoy me later on. Dragging windows around really fast with "display content in moving windows" on and music playing. The sort of thing that would bring Linux 2.4 to its knees easily
      • FreeBSD 5.2 has some annoying things. Like you've got to manually enable the drivers for sound devices and USB mice. And you've got to recompile the kernel to get ext2 support. It's pretty easy and well documented, but you can't just install and have a working system with no additional work.
      • Gentoo didn't (for me) have any major issues. I mean, compile times can be a bitch, but you'll be doing that on FreeBSD eventually too.
      • FreeBSD can do some really nifty stuff that Linux can't. Like jails.
      My advice is to wait until FreeBSD 5 hits STABLE and Linux 2.6 matures a little bit, install both, and see what's more fun.
      --
      When someone might yell at me, it has to be OpenBSD.
  6. Impressive by mgv · · Score: 5, Interesting

    These are impressive improvements.

    Its actuallly hard to believe that there is that much more improvement to be gained - it will leave the microsoft servers even further behind as I don't think that they are improving their kernel that fast.

    One question:

    Does this mean that we can see improvements in low end systems for desktop use, or is the benefit only for servers. Because if this helps low end machines, it extends further the number of machines that can move from (say) win 98 to a real OS, whose hardware has long been abandoned by microsoft.

    Michael

    --
    There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
    1. Re:Impressive by JebusIsLord · · Score: 5, Informative

      well i know the preemtive and low-latency changes (while available as patches to 2.4) are included in 2.6, and make a significant difference to GUI responsiveness.

      --
      Jeremy
    2. Re:Impressive by zmooc · · Score: 4, Informative

      I can now watch divx on my pII-233 with it. Xmms never skips and X remains useable under high loads. It's an incredibly huge difference to 2.4. But I only noticed when I had to go back to 2.4.22 to try out openmosix. It was absolutely annoyingly slow compared to 2.6.

      --
      0x or or snor perron?!
    3. Re:Impressive by the+arbiter · · Score: 2, Funny

      Nice try, thanks for playing. It's a troll. It hits every article on /.

      --
      Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
    4. Re:Impressive by Serveert · · Score: 3, Funny

      The pre-emptible kernel(you must enable this, it's off by default) will blow your mind when using a GUI. It is beyond impressive, it's like you're neo and you can see the mouse pointer before it gets to where you move your mouse.

      You can grep your hard drive many times yet still browse the web with no slow down.

      --
      2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
    5. Re:Impressive by xcomm · · Score: 2, Informative

      >>>Does this mean that we can see improvements in low end systems for desktop use, or is the benefit only for servers. Because if this helps low end machines, it extends further the number of machines that can move from (say) win 98 to a real OS, whose hardware has long been abandoned by microsoft.

      Unfortunataly not!

      I personally have not made the same exiting experience about the new 2.6.x kernels spead on my old PII 400 and 320MB (normally relatively fast due SCSI and 3Com TCP support). Especially if you have open some windows it reacts really harder than under 2.4. Different is sometimes only, that it seems to suggest you a better reaction, which is like the new scheduler is itnended to work.

      So I'm running 2.6.x at home, but it's not looking to be the fastest kernel on small consumer gear. It looks designed for the big iron in the enterprise or at home. All other suggestions looking to me like propaganda.

      Greetings from a GNU/Linux geek!

  7. Linux in cache? by SHEENmaster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What I'd like to see is Linux that could run entirely within cache on the higher end chips. Even dated UltraSparcII chips can have up to 8M/cache. That's 64M in an 8-way box, allowing for some truly awe-inspiring performance on mathematical problems if RAM is ignored.

    I haven't looked into sparc assembly enough to know if this is possible.

    --
    You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
    1. Re:Linux in cache? by ParisTG · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Caching is controlled completely by the CPU, transparent of the programmer.

      Assuming that the kernel is the only code running, and it is small enough to fit into cache, then it will get there eventually.

      However, it would make no sense to keep the entire kernel in cache, since most of that code isn't used most of the time. Also, application software is running at the same time, which needs to be cached as well.

      In other words, just trust the CPU. It knows what it's doing :).

    2. Re:Linux in cache? by runderwo · · Score: 5, Informative
      Caching is controlled completely by the CPU, transparent of the programmer.
      Only in some designs. Architectures like MIPS allow for both a cache-coherent or non-cache-coherent design. In a non-cache-coherent design, the cache is not transparent, and the kernel programmer is responsible for cache management; marking pages as dirty, flushing cache, etc. These designs are significantly more difficult to program and are present on some SGI machines, making porting to those machines a significant task.

      Theoretically, higher performance can be achieved in a non-cache-coherent design, since the programmer would ostensibly know more about which data is most frequently used on his system and be able to customize his kernel for that. Also, it requires less glue logic on the board. However, the intent may be thwarted if the programmer doesn't have all the documentation (or skills) necessary to make efficient use of a software controlled cache.

      --
      LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
    3. Re:Linux in cache? by lars_stefan_axelsson · · Score: 4, Informative

      Caching is controlled completely by the CPU, transparent of the programmer.

      Not really true these days. Some architectures do have an explicit 'cache preload' instruction, such as the SPARC V9 and the ARM9E to mention two. These allow the programmer to preload a D-cache line before it is needed.

      As the speed of the CPU has increased much faster than the speed of main memory (and hence increasing the relative cost of a cache mis), compiler based techniques to emit cache preload instructions in advance, before the data is actually needed, has been the subject of some research in the past 7-8 years. The main reason to do it is software, instead of hardware, is that the compiler have a greater knowledge of the layout of the entire task, as it can 'look ahead' in the source code. The main disadvantage is that any static analysis, of course won't have access to dynamic (run time) data about the program as it is running.

      If you wish to go further, you could do worse than to start with my former colleague Magnus Karlsson's PhD thesis on the subject:

      Magnus Karlsson: "Data Prefetching Techniques Targeting Single and a Network of Processing Nodes". Ph. D. thesis, Department of Computer Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, December 1999.

      And of course as always, Google and citeseer is your friend.

      In other words, just trust the CPU. It knows what it's doing :).

      Well, actually, it doesn't these days... :-) Trust the compiler instead :-) (Yeah, right).

      --
      Stefan Axelsson
  8. My thoughts... by big_groo · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I haven't noticed *any* differences on the desktop. ALSA is nice, kernel config is easier, but other than that...nothing noteworthy over 2.4.19 (my last kernel). Am I missing something? Oh, and I *still* can't get my USB mic to work (help!).

    Slackware with Dropline, btw. I do notice that Java tends to take up 250MB of RAM every once in a while while running Firebird. I didn't have that problem with 2.x.x.

    1. Re:My thoughts... by pacman+on+prozac · · Score: 5, Interesting

      My thoughts were, wow, much faster. I'm now running 2.6 on all my desktop machines and it flies. They "seem" much more responsive with 2.6 than 2.4, especially under load.

      The initial boot time to load the kernel seems to have massively dropped although I could be imagining that.

      The new build system in 2.6 definately rocks, forgot to compile something important in? No need to wait for * to recompile anymore, just the vital parts are re-done.

    2. Re:My thoughts... by echeslack · · Score: 3, Informative

      I don't notice any real speedups, but I do not really notice updatedb running anymore. Actually that's not entirely true, I just notice it a lot less. Many times it will run and I won't notice it. The mouse used to start getting all sticky when I had too much disk activity. Now it *mostly* runs smoothly.

      --
      GMail invites for completed freeipods.com of
    3. Re:My thoughts... by owlstead · · Score: 5, Informative

      No, you aren't missing something. Applications will still run as they did, except when they are heavily multithreaded. Starting up something CPU-cycle expensive and typing in open office might give you an idea.

      But all in all, it's the kernel. End users should be nicely unaware of it. Don't expect any fireworks to go off, most of the time you notice a kernel you will have hoped you didn't :).

    4. Re:My thoughts... by Robo210 · · Score: 2, Informative

      I use 2.6 on a Pentium 133 with 48mb of RAM, and I have noticed *huge* differences in the boot time. KDE seems to start up slower, but run a bit faster... well, at least the mouse seems to lag a bit less... its hard to tell when everything runs so slow to begin with. Running either 2.4 or 2.6 still eats my swap file, but I guess thats what I get for using such old hardware. Oh, and Gnome acts the same.

    5. Re:My thoughts... by shadowbearer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Ditto here. I've been running the -test kernels on the faster machine since summer, so I can't remember just how much difference there was. I do know it was noticeable, tho. In particular setiathome used to noticeably slow the machine; now I don't even notice whether it's running or not. *grin* 2.6 definitely WU'ed me there *grin*

      On the laptop I just compiled 2.6.1 for, however, (a 200mhz DEC HiNote) the speed increases are huge. You're not imagining the boot time drop - it's easily twice as fast on the laptop as 2.4.20 was. The GUI is also noticeably more responsive.

      The new build system is great, especially on a slow machine :) Kudos to the kernel people, and thanks!

      SB

      --
      It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
    6. Re:My thoughts... by mellon101 · · Score: 2, Informative

      CD and DVD burning used to absolutely kill my system with 2.4 kernels. High cpu usage and everything was jumpy and slow. With 2.6 I just cant seem to bog it down ....no matter what I do. I can be compiling GNOME, burning a DVD, and doing a number of other things ....and it all is smooth as silk. I love this kernel!

  9. 2.6 on server? by black666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Those benchmarks are nice, but who runs kernel 2.6 on production servers that need every speed they can get? It will be a few more 2.6.x releases until I consider running one of my servers with a 2.6 kernel.

    1. Re:2.6 on server? by 1000StonedMonkeys · · Score: 3, Funny

      Well, yes, but it's a safe bet that the speed improvements in 2.6.0 won't disappear in later versions of the kernel.

  10. BSD Vs Linux Vs Windows 2k3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How does 2.6 compare to Free or Open BSD & how do they compare to windows 2003 server doing the same job?

  11. NTFS Read/write support? by lawpoop · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The chart on the first page says that 2.6 supports read and write for NTFS. Is this really the case? Does anyone trust NTFS writing if it's in the kernel?

    --
    Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
    -- Pablo Picasso
    1. Re:NTFS Read/write support? by jensend · · Score: 5, Informative

      The native ntfs driver supports writing only if the write operation wouldn't disturb any of the metadata- that is, you can't create or delete any files but you can safely overwrite a file if you don't change its size. This is more useful than it sounds at first- you can use a loopback file on the ntfs partition for anything you want.

    2. Re:NTFS Read/write support? by ensignyu · · Score: 2, Informative

      Write support is (supposedly) safe, because it will *only* let you do things that are safe. Pretty much limited to writing to an existing file without changing the size.

      So it's not really full NTFS write support yet.

    3. Re:NTFS Read/write support? by damiam · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The Captive project uses Wine technology to natively load the Windows NTFS driver. It's not quite as good as native, but it might fit your needs.

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
  12. It's shame, really. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's not Linux 2.6.x, it's SCO/Linux 2.6.1.

  13. Also notable.... by haggar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ..is the parformance of the Opteron. Looks like Linux 2.6.x and Opteron are a great combo. Okay, I admit, I was a bit skeptical regarding Linux 2.6, but it seems it might actually deliver.

    I'm looking forward for Solaris + Opteron servers. Should be another interesting combo, performance wise. For one, Solaris 9 has some fantastic scheduling for multiprocessor machines. Additionally, it has been implemented in 64 bit for many years.

    --
    Sigged!
    1. Re:Also notable.... by Doomdark · · Score: 3, Interesting
      I'm looking forward for Solaris + Opteron servers. Should be another interesting combo, performance wise. For one, Solaris 9 has some fantastic scheduling for multiprocessor machines. Additionally, it has been implemented in 64 bit for many years.

      One potential concern, though, is that while there has been Solaris for x86 for a while, it's not really its main platform... so it's bit like waiting for 2.4.6 kernel on, say, Sparc systems. So I'm wondering if Solaris design of scheduling (and other kernel parts) takes some advantage of Sparc processor's design, that wouldn't map nicely into Opteron? In future this should get better (since Sun is now allied with AMD), but Solaris 9 was written probably well before x86 was seen as strategic platform for Sun.

      --
      I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
    2. Re:Also notable.... by paitre · · Score: 3, Informative

      Sun is doing an Opteron-optimized build of Solaris, but don't expect it in the short term.
      That's about all I can say ATM, but it -is- on the way...

  14. Re:Where's the distros by MarcQuadra · · Score: 4, Informative

    Wow, you need to quit bitching. 2.6 will be in the distros 'when they're ready', do you remember all the really broken 2.4.x stuff? It was REALLY bad press for folks who COULDN'T UNMOUNT DRIVES safely.

    Let the ubernerds self-build 2.6 systems for a while and work out more bugs. If you want it you can have it, but mass-distribution before we even hit 2.6.2 might be a BIG mistake.

    --
    "Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
  15. Good to know that. by nefele · · Score: 5, Funny

    So if I use the new and improved herbal 2.6 kernel my processing power will be UP TO 150% BIGGER and my UPTIME will be 200% LONGER!!
    And it's only $699 a box! ;-)

  16. Time for some more FAIR benchmarks by haruchai · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I'd like to see how Linux 2.6 stacks up against Windows Server 2003 now. This time, let's have Microsoft and Redhat or some other Linux gurus go head to head.
    One of the good things of benchmarking at an early stage is that it may expose some hard to find weaknesses, much like the first Mindcraft tests exposed a kernel limitation which hampered Apache's performance.
    --
    Pain is merely failure leaving the body
  17. Re:Where's the distros by Thomas+M+Hughes · · Score: 2, Informative

    Debian/Unstable can install 2.6.0 a regular apt-get install at this very moment. Its just something like:

    apt-get install kernel-image-2.6.0-1-processor type

    If you're running stable, you shouldn't be running a 2.6 kernel anyway.

  18. Tests by Sir+Pallas · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I guess it's important to ask the following question: was 2.4 ever designed to run on those kinds of processors? I mean, the O(1) scheduler is a pretty cool, processor independant change; but was 2.6 designed with specific optimizations for newer processors (and newer instructions) in mind? I'd be interested to see benchmarks from old hardware -- i.e., stuff like I've got sitting around. (If only I had a bit more time. Maybe I can borrow some cycles from 2.6 Linux boxen.)

    1. Re:Tests by chunkwhite86 · · Score: 2, Informative

      I guess it's important to ask the following question: was 2.4 ever designed to run on those kinds of processors? I mean, the O(1) scheduler is a pretty cool, processor independant change; but was 2.6 designed with specific optimizations for newer processors (and newer instructions) in mind? I'd be interested to see benchmarks from old hardware -- i.e., stuff like I've got sitting around. (If only I had a bit more time. Maybe I can borrow some cycles from 2.6 Linux boxen.)

      I'm guessing that the answer is yes and no.

      When you roll your own kernel, you can select which CPU you are building for. This enables optimizations for that specific CPU (but usually breaks compatibility with older CPU's). So no, I don't think it was build with these new CPU's in mind, but it does have the optional optimizations in there to take advantage of them - just like it does for 486 and pentium and Athlon.

      Keep in mind that your compiler must also have approperiate optimizations for your CPU to see the best performance. I'm not sure how far gcc has come on PPC970, Opteron, and Itanium these days.

      --
      I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
  19. Re:I can't believe these results by JumboMessiah · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually, it wouldn't suprise me if this is correct. If you notice, he was reading the 500MB file while a continuous streaming write was going on in the background. On 2.4.x, a write streamout will kill read performance drastically. Mostly due to the way the I/O scheduler schedules the read. Which, most of the time, is to stash it at the end of the writes.

    The two new I/O schedulers in 2.6.x help to resolve this. For more info, check here.

  20. Re:Who cares? OS X kicks both. by mgv · · Score: 2, Interesting

    OS X is far better than either "kernel". With OS X you get a better GUI, more apps, and an OS that is backed up by a fantastic corporation, rather than a bunch of hackers who have dubious backgrounds and sketchy credentials.

    You aren't comparing like with like. I have windows, linux and OSX running on different laptops at home (ok, I have a problem with needing toys, but at least I have insight).

    OSX is very nice - but you don't buy it for speed. In fact, the sort of people who buy it often gloat at how you don't need to worry about that sort of thing with a Mac. I don't doubt that for many windows users, they would be much better off with a mac, as they are pretty clueless, and Mac's are a very nice implementation of the BSD core.

    However, this isn't what this post is about. It could be argued that any server that runs a GUI is wasting resources. It depends on what you are asking your server to do.

    There are clear improvements in the 2.6 kernel, especially with regard to Disk access from what I can see in the article.

    This is totally different to which OS provides the better GUI. In any case, OSX doesn't run on a vast amount of hardware out there, and your attitude is that all that intel stuff is only good for landfill. If you accept that there is alot of hardware out there that will NEVER run OSX, then you should also accept that for those people, its very useful to know if 2.6 is a better performer.

    Michael

    --
    There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
  21. 2.4 versus 2.6: file system performance? by Debian+Troll's+Best · · Score: 2, Insightful

    These are some pretty encouraging results. The hard work put in by all the kernel developers has obviously paid off in a big way. However, after reading the article I still have a few questions about kernel 2.6 performance, namely filesystem performance. Rapid random read/write access is obviously highly critical for enterprise type applications, such as apt-get package management and package database updates. Basically with the 2.4.x series of kernels, filesystem performance using either the ext2 or ext3 schemes could drop to below 5 apt-get package installs per second, even on large SMP/RAID systems. I have been investigating the use of raw disk I/O (similar to that used for high performance table spaces in products like Oracle and DB2) to reach my target of 100 apt-get package installations per second on commodity level hardware, via custom kernel level ATA and SCSI chipset drivers. But I'd love to hear that FS speeds have been improved in the 2.6 kernel. Has anybody benchmarked this aspect of the new kernel? And if so, when could we expect to see Debian start shipping with the 2.6 kernel? I look forward to reading the community's response.

    1. Re:2.4 versus 2.6: file system performance? by Debian+Troll's+Best · · Score: 4, Funny
      Thanks for the suggestions hdparm, but since I posted my original comment my colleagues and I have decided on taking a hardware-oriented approach to solve our problem. Specifically, this will involve careful removal of the outer metal shell of each of the Seagate Cheetah SCSI hard drives from our RAID1+0 setup and making a few changes to the internal structure of the drive to effectively 'overclock' the hard drives. Let me explain

      Stock Seagate Cheetahs use a fairly standard aluminium drive shaft, much like the one in a consumer grade piece of rubbish. We are replacing each of these with a carbon propeller shaft and light-weight fly wheel, which will increase initial acceleration of the drive platters, and will allow them to spin at a maximum speed of 17,500rpm versus the standard 10,000rpm. This should see our rate of apt-get transactions improve dramatically. But that's not all. As any good CPU overclocker knows, 'lapping' the contact surface of their heatsink will remove microscopic imperfections and result in a closer contact between heatsink and CPU. We too will be 'lapping' each hard drive platter. Of course this is dangerous to the platters, so we are always sure to use a fresh Kleenex each time. Once the platters are lapped, we can alter the suspension and damping characteristics of the read/write heads, making them float even closer to the platter and resulting in sportier turn-in, less body roll and more predictable handling even when dealing with 'rough' packages such as Troll Tech's Qt libraries which still have an aura of 'non-free' about them.

      Finally we short-circuit resistor A24-J, which amazingly unlocks a special 'developers' mode of the hard drive, and firmware commands may be directly inputted using a text editor. We have developed a set of SCSI firmware routines which recognise the apt-get and .deb file formats even at the lowest level of hardware, offering stellar apt-get-goodness. Using a customised version of apt-get implemented in a mix of x86 assembler and Python (for the performance critical parts), apt-get is now able to bypass the Linux kernel, PC BIOS and the SCSI controller card, and communicate with the hard drive mechanics directly. This adds approximately an extra 60% to overall performance, to say nothing of the improvement in overall reliability and robustness.

      We feel that these modifications will result in a drive array that will provide a superior platform for high-throughput enterprise level apt-get package management, regardless of filesystem. In fact we have very little choice about filesystem, since the lapping procedure with the Kleenex irreversibly etches tracks and sectors onto the drive surface. No need to worry about 5% of the drive being wasted on superuser-only space after a reformat! Now, I realise that these types of hardware mods may not be in the reach of all Debian users out there. I'm happy to discuss this further with the community if necessary. I am also creating a HOW-TO, which will be distributed via apt-get mirrors in the form of an 'info' document (man pages are filled with inaccuracies due to the inherently lossy compression techniques used in their production. RMS was really onto something with info!!!).

      I look forward to the GNU/community's feedback.

  22. backports by POds · · Score: 4, Informative

    for those who dont know, you've been able to get a back port of 2.6 on woody for the last month (almost).

    so go get it, and tell me how it will effect my surfing, emailing, mp3ing and general userish behavour on my P2 400 128RAM...

    Go on, get to it! :)

    --


    Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
    1. Re:backports by shadowbearer · · Score: 4, Interesting


      I just compiled 2.6.1 for my 200mhz laptop (Debian unstable) and the speed increase - especially at boot and for Fluxbox - was very, very noticeable, particularly for cpu intensive apps.

      I haven't noticed any breakage - not yet - the machine has only been up for 4 days running 2.6.1. But so far it's great :)

      BTW I used the kernel source from debian, not the backport.

      A question for anyone out there with a Digital HiNote 7xx series laptop; any idea which sound chip it uses, and how to set up sound? Google hasn't been very informative. (Not a 2.6 problem, I can't figure out which driver to use; most people seem to be using old SB compatibility, but I can't make it work :( TIA )

      SB

      --
      It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
  23. Benchmark against vendor kernels? by salimma · · Score: 3, Informative
    No self-respecting large Linux distributor would ship a vanilla 2.4 kernel (well, SuSE does, but as an option, and not pre-compiled). The O(1) scheduler which AFAICT makes quite a large performance difference, has been available since RH9, IIRC, and presumably its contemporaries adopted it back then as well.

    So it's not such a big leap for real users. Mind you, still a big improvement - especially for interactive use, and also considering that there are so many patches for 2.4 that are now integrated into 2.6, lessening compatibility worries (try patching Red Hat's pre-FC1 2.4 kernel source).

    --
    Michel
    Fedora Project Contribut
    1. Re:Benchmark against vendor kernels? by petabyte · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I ran the -ck patches to 2.4 (they have a backported pre-empt, O(1), and low latency) before moving to 2.6. The -ck patches were noticably faster than vanilla 2.4 but 2.6 still crushes them on boot. 2.6 also seems a hair more responsive than 2.4-ck but I expected that.

      And I've never used a vendor kernel beyond booting the system and downloading/compiling my own.

  24. just wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I can't wait until the year 2007 when 2.6 finally moves to Debian stable.

  25. 2.6 just didn't wow me by rsilvergun · · Score: 2, Informative

    on low end hardware at least. I've got an old Dell with a p200 and 64 megs of ram running Slackware 9.1. The processor could keep up but there's just not enough ram, even running a lightweight window manager like blackbox or XFCE. I'm not exactly trying to run uber-apps here (Abiword and Firebird mostly). Switching to 2.6 from 2.4 helped some, but not nearly enough. Funny thing is, I ran RH 6.2 on simularily configured I guess it bugs me because I was looking forward to showing my friends how I've got a modern desktop and applications running on an old P200. hardware. When did Linux become such a memeory hog? And to think I laughed when I saw Lindows' min sys requirements where a PIII 800.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:2.6 just didn't wow me by chunkwhite86 · · Score: 2, Informative

      You're not totally correct here: 686 is everything from PentiumII / K6-2 and up.

      Neither are you sir. Ahem, i686 is everything from Pentium Pro and up. I'm typing this from a PPro 200 (with a huge 1MB L2 cache) and 128MB running an i686 mozilla build.

      --
      I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
  26. Real world vs. fanboy fantasies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I am what most people would consider a highly trained technical professional. Unlike most people who spout off at this site, I have the certificates to prove this, and furthermore they're issued by the biggest software company in existence.

    I know how to tell facts from marketing fluff. Now, here are the facts as they're found by SEVERAL INDEPENDENT RESEARCH INSTITUTES:

    Expenses for file-server workloads under Windows, compared to LinuxOS:
    • Staffing expenses were 33.5% better.
    • Training costs were 32.3% better.


    They compared Microsofts IIS to the Linux 7.0 webserver. For Windows, the cost was only:
    • $40.25 per megabit of throughput per second.
    • $1.79 per peak request per second.


    Application development and support costs for Windows compared to an opensores solution like J2EE:
    • 28.2% less for large enterprises.
    • 25.0% less for medium organizations.


    A full Windows installation, compared to installing Linux, on an Enterprise Server boxen:
    • Is nearly three hours faster.
    • Requires 77% fewer steps.


    Compared to the best known opensores webserver "Red Hat", Microsoft IIS:
    • Has 276% better peak performance for static transactions.
    • Has 63% better peak performance for dynamic content.


    These are hard numbers and 100% FACTS! There are several more where these came from.

    Who do you think we professionals trust more?
    Reliable companies with tried and tested products, or that bedroom coder Thorwalds who publicly admits that he is in fact A HACKER???

    --
    Copyright (c) 2004 Mike Bouma, MCSE, MCDST, MS Office Specialist

    Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
    under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
    or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
    with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover
    Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU
    Free Documentation License".
    1. Re:Real world vs. fanboy fantasies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      And who paid for that research, likely under the stipulation that they wouldn't pay for it if it didn't show results that Microsoft liked?

      Microsoft.

      You're living in a fantasy land if you think IIS is cheaper than or faster than apache 2.0.x

    2. Re:Real world vs. fanboy fantasies by mabinogi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Its my experience that "highly trained technical professionals" would have enough real world experience to know the sort of crap code that can come out of any company...no matter how much money you throw at it, and that there's nothing inherently better about a product that costs money. In fact, it's been my experience that the more you pay for something, the crappier it is *cough*legato*cough*

      Also, professional you may be (as in you get payed to do it), but you have very little professionalism if you have to resort to using terms like "open sores", not to mention the fact that you haven't got a clue what you're talking about due to your use of terms like "the Linux 7.0 webserver", "LinuxOS", and reference to RedHat as a web server, as well as referring to J2EE as an open source product, instead of the specification implemented by many proprietry application servers by companies such as IBM, Oracle, Borland and BEA.

      I'm not even sure why I'm replying to this...it might as well have been generated by a script...

      --
      Advanced users are users too!
    3. Re:Real world vs. fanboy fantasies by JPriest · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It was a joke that went way over your head.

      For Windows, the cost was only:
      $40.25 per megabit of throughput per second.
      $1.79 per peak request per second.

      --
      Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
    4. Re:Real world vs. fanboy fantasies by WhiteDeath · · Score: 2, Informative
      A full Windows installation, compared to installing Linux, on an Enterprise Server boxen:

      * Is nearly three hours faster.
      * Requires 77% fewer steps.

      Three hours faster on enterprise hardware?
      Well compared to the complete install of slackware 9 (with everything) I did yesterday that would mean you can get a fully operational windows box connected to the internet, running proxy server, sharing postscript printers, talking to both MacOS and Windows 98, serving web documents, remotely configurable and ready for you to walk out the door in about zero minutes. I'm impressed!.

      Mind you there were only a few actual user accounts to set up, and it was just an old pentium 3 500Mhz with 128M RAM and a 20G drive - not exactly your current "enterprise class" machine.
      Something modern would likey have taken half the time.

      Actually, I had allocated most of the day just in case - so I spent a few hours upgrading and tweaking a few things.

    5. Re:Real world vs. fanboy fantasies by rossz · · Score: 2, Funny
      Unlike most people who spout off at this site, I have the certificates to prove this, and furthermore they're issued by the biggest software company in existence.

      Mike Bouma, MCSE, MCDST, MS Office Specialist

      You left off the C&C so you owe me a new keyboard.
      --
      -- Will program for bandwidth
    6. Re:Real world vs. fanboy fantasies by uarch · · Score: 2, Funny

      "...highly trained technical professional"
      "I have the certificates to prove this"

      Using the phrase highly trained professional in conjunction with an MS cert is nearly worth +5 funny by itself. ;)

    7. Re:Real world vs. fanboy fantasies by sg_oneill · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Who do you think we professionals trust more?
      Reliable companies with tried and tested products, or that bedroom coder Thorwalds who publicly admits that he is in fact A HACKER???

      Hats off to you good sir! The funniest troll I've seen in a while. Actually had me about ready to engage in a shouting fit till that last line. Hilarious.

      Putting the post under a GPL, genius!

      --
      Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
    8. Re:Real world vs. fanboy fantasies by stfvon007 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Microsoft had an "independant" tester do some tests, and even they found the total costs for a web server were LESS for linux. (other services were however found to cost more in total cost however)

      --
      All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
    9. Re:Real world vs. fanboy fantasies by ogre57 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Must .. resist ..

      A full Windows installation, compared to installing Linux ..
      • Is nearly three hours faster.

      Please stay calm. Some nice men in white coats will be here aaanny minute now. They're going to give you a pretty jacket with extra-long sleeves, take your for a niice relaxing ride. Okay? ("nearly three hours faster" .. sure. Full Linux server install I did last week took maybe 30 minutes. Otoh maybe there's some special Dr Who version. :)) )

    10. Re:Real world vs. fanboy fantasies by Cobron · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sarcasm just goes WAY over your head, doesn't it?

  27. Re:Who cares? OS X kicks both. by be-fan · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually the OS X kernel is about half as fast in lmbench (UNIX benchmark) as Linux 2.4. The OS X kernel is really antiquated. Much of it is 4.4BSD and Mach code. The GUI is modern, but the guts are ancient.

    --
    A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
  28. This can mean two things... by SharpFang · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Maybe one of them, maybe both...

    1) The new kernel is really very good.

    2) The old kernel is really very bad.

    Really, if such huge increase was possible, there must have been a lot of room for it. If you face a really well written program, you have a hard time to speed it up by 5%. If you can speed it up by 50% without loss in other domains, it must have been seriously flawed.

    Yeah, mod me flamebait. But first think if I'm really wrong.

    --
    45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
    1. Re:This can mean two things... by natmsincome.com · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Most of it has to do with the algorithms. For example I can write a really optimized bubble search but if you write an un optimized quick sort it will still be faster than my optimized bubble search. That being said any newbie programmer can do a bubble search but you have to know what you're doing to do a quick/merge sort.

      So while 2.4 wasn't using the best solutions it was better than nothing. It's always better to have bad working code than great code that doesn't work. Hurd is a great example. It may be batter but it doesn't work (well enough for me anyway) yet so who cares.

      IDE is another example. If I remember correctly 2.2 didn't have DMA support but it worked adding DMA makes it much faster but it would have made it more unstable if they added it at the beginning.

      The last thing that you have to remember is that lots of the changes were taking advantage of features in the newer hardware. If you ran the same test on 486 you wouldn't get the same results as you'd have different bottlenecks. In another 10 years we'll get the same thing again. The might make it so that the bus to the memory is as faster as the level 2 cache on the CPU. If they do that they'll have to make big changes to the OS to get rid of the new bottle necks and you'd increase the speed by another 50% or maybe even 100%

      Anyway that's enough ranting.

    2. Re:This can mean two things... by be-fan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A kernel is much more complex than a single program. A program usually does one thing, and once you've optimized that, that's all there really is. In contrast, a kernel does all sorts of things. 2.2 was good for small-scale servers. 2.4 was good for mid-range servers. 2.6 is good for larger servers and desktop machines. 2.8 is supposed to get improvements to make it better on desktops and on huge NUMA machines. Linux has always been a fast kernel for what it did, its just that its doing a lot more today than it did a few years ago.

      --
      A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
    3. Re:This can mean two things... by iabervon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The old kernel had a lot of room for improvement on the systems they tested; but that's primarily due to the fact that the systems are substantially newer than the 2.4 series. A 2 GB dual Xeon system running 2.4 isn't going to use the processors efficiently (hyperthreading, imprecise locks), and isn't going to deal with the memory effectively. It was in part to take advantage of the availablity of such systems that the changes for 2.6 were made.

      New conditions require new optimizations and new designs; a good program optimized for a set of inputs which are common at one time may be really inefficient at handling inputs that become common later. Sure, you can make a program that's good for both sorts of input, but it doesn't make sense to try to do so until someone actually has such an input to test with.

  29. Naked eye test by Zordas · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yesterday I started a new Gentoo install with the 2.6.1 kernel. I used GCC 3.3.2 and glibc 2.3.2 with NPTL support. I have to admit, the naked eye can see a major diferance with the new kernel. With my XP computer and the new gentoo install (exact same computers .. P4 512MB) I ran a simple boot up and lanch a web browser test. And supprise supprise, Gnome is screamming fast. I had already booted and opened up mozilla 1.6 befor xp was even done booting! Also, simple stuff like opening up email, browsing, etc. is all noticable faster than XP. Soo... before I get slammed by the XP folks.. my XP box was also a clean install. (yes, I have no life!) I am happy to say I am one step closer to completely weening myself off of windows XP.

    1. Re:Naked eye test by Zordas · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Agreed.. Currently I'm using devfs,pty and hotplug. I did read the doc's on udev and was a little miffed about how to actually install it. But since the Gentoo forums and pretty good, I'll more than likely installl it in the next few day's. This (according to the doc's, will speed up my computer even faster).

  30. Article text by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Raw c&p, please forgive random spam.

    Linux v2.6 scales the enterprise
    Bigger, stronger kernel sizzles in our performance tests

    By Paul Venezia January 30, 2004

    If commercial Unix vendors weren't already worried about Linux, they should be now. Linux has seen wide deployment in datacenters, generally as a Web server or a file server, or to handle network tasks such as DNS and DHCP, but not as a platform for running mission-critical enterprise applications. Solaris, AIX, or HP/UX typically get the nod when an application demands the highest levels of performance and scalability. The recent release of a new Linux kernel, v2.6, promises to change that.

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    The v2.6 kernel ushers in a new era of support for big iron with big workloads, opening the door for Linux to handle the most demanding tasks that are currently handled by Solaris, AIX, or HP/UX. The new kernel not only supports greater amounts of RAM and a higher processor count, but the core of device management has changed. Previous to this kernel there were limits within the kernel that could constrain large systems, such as a 65,536 process limit before rollover, and 256 devices per chain. The v2.6 kernel moves well beyond these limitations, and it includes support for some of the largest server architectures around.

    Will the new Linux really perform in the same league as the big boys? To find out, I put the v2.6.0 kernel through several real-world performance tests, comparing its file server, database server, and Web server performance with a recent v2.4 series kernel, v2.4.23.

    Linux Meets Big Iron

    A primary focus of the v2.6 kernel is large server architectures. Support for up to 64GB RAM in paged mode, the ability to address file systems larger than 2TB, and support for 64 CPUs in x86-based SMP systems brings this kernel and Linux into the more rarified air of truly mission-critical systems. The included support for NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) systems; a next-generation SMP architecture; and PAE (Physical Address Extensions), providing support for up to 64GB of RAM on 32-bit systems, is also new.

    There is much more to v2.6 than just bigger numbers in processor and RAM counts, however. This kernel breaks apart some of the artificial limitations that have been present in Linux from the beginning, such as the number of addressable devices and total available PIDs (Processor Identifiers). The v2.4 kernel supported 255 major devices with 255 minor numbers. (For example, a volume on a SCSI disk located at /dev/sda3 has a major number of 8, since it's a SCSI device, and a minor number of 3.) On servers with a large number of real or virtual devices, device allocation can become problematic. The v2.6 kernel addresses these issues in a big way, moving to 4,096 major devices with more than one million subdevices per

  31. Re:Where's the distros by salimma · · Score: 2, Informative
    mass-distribution before we even hit 2.6.2 might be a BIG mistake

    Won't be a long wait; 2.6.2-rc3 is out now.

    FC2 test1 should be out next week with a post-2.6.1 kernel as default. With SELinux to boot, though it's recommended to disable it at boot time for test1. Mandrake 10.0 beta1 has 2.6.1 too.

    --
    Michel
    Fedora Project Contribut
  32. ahem... by Apreche · · Score: 5, Funny

    2.4 is the old and busted
    2.6 is the new hotness

    --
    The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
  33. Re:Who cares? OS X kicks both. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Oh yeah? Well, you're locking yourself into commodity hardware and a cycle of free software upgrades!

    Hmm... that comeback doesn't seem as potent as I thought it would be. Oh, wait, I know! You're locking yourself into an eternity of vigilance.

  34. Re:Mystical Mozilla Speed Increases... by Garg · · Score: 4, Funny
    Sure, it's right there in the kernel:
    if (strcmp(username,"ltorvalds")==0) {
    gooseMozilla();
    }
    Garg
    --
    Garg
    Alumnus, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
  35. Re:Slashdotted by Zork+the+Almighty · · Score: 2, Funny

    Maybe they were in the process of switching to 2.6.

    --

    In Soviet America the banks rob you!
  36. Re:interesting hardware comp by Rob+Riggs · · Score: 3, Insightful
    does it seem that the opteron smokes the itanium2 and xeon? this can't bode well for intel.

    The comparisons won't make much real-world sense until the evaluation is done using Intel's compiler for the Itanium tests. The GNU compiler is just not up to snuff at optimizing for Itanium's EPIC instruction set.

    I would like to see Intel contribute Itanium optimizations to GNU, but I doubt this will happen since they sell a competing product.

    --
    the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
  37. How does this compare to the BSDs? by FFFish · · Score: 3, Interesting

    THIS IS NOT AN INVITATION TO A FLAME WAR.

    Does anyone have factual comparisons of a reasonably-tweaked Linux (2.6 kernel) with a reasonably-tweaked [x]BSD (whatever kernel)?

    --

    --
    Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
    1. Re:How does this compare to the BSDs? by Josh+Booth · · Score: 2, Informative

      An older /. article did directly compare *BSD and Linux, but it really had only benchmarks of specific system calls, not much in the way of real application performance. However, it did show that, while Linux 2.6 was mostly O(1) and at most O(n), the BSDs were mostly O(n) or more, only occasionally being O(1). I think NetBSD was the worst offender. But then again it had few or no real world benchmarks.

    2. Re:How does this compare to the BSDs? by tarm · · Score: 3, Informative

      Try this link.

      It's an excellent comparison.

  38. Singing to the Choir. by tealover · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wonder what the response would be if someone posted similar numbers about Microsoft's next OS. I'm sure they'd find creative ways to diminish the results.

    One thing I've learned is not to take tech writers too seriously. Most of them are writers for a reason.

    --
    -- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
  39. Re:Forgot DMA on the 2.4.23 box? by nmos · · Score: 2, Informative

    AFAIK there arn't even any hard drives in existance that can actually pull data off their platters that fast. Unless this was a RAID setup something is wrong with the test.

  40. did I hear JOKE? by tasinet · · Score: 3, Informative

    i dont know if it's been posted already but check this. Aint no joke mister.

  41. The root of all evil by clasher · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Donald Knuth said "Premature optimization is the root of all evil"

    Therefore I assume #1 is much more likely than #2.

    It would seem as though the 2.4 focussed on getting a number of feature in the kernel while the 2.6 series allowed the developers to work towards making those new feature faster. Programming a new feature from scratch while also aiming to optimize it for speed can often lead to buggy code. Optimized code is rarely as straightforward and easy to debug as a more general (but slower) algorithm. When it comes to something as important as a kernel I'd much rather have clean, clear code which can later be optimized than a confusing kludge meant to squeeze out the last little bit of processing power.

    Just my humble opinion

  42. It may be faster by Molina+the+Bofh · · Score: 2, Funny

    It may be faster, it may be smoother, but I bet it still won't be able to handle the full power of the terrible hordes of slashdotters.

    --

    -
    Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
  43. Requirements? by chunkwhite86 · · Score: 2

    Does anyone know the Linux system requirements for 2.6? I.e. what gcc, libc, etc. are required to run it?

    --
    I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
    1. Re:Requirements? by The+One+KEA · · Score: 3, Informative

      Check the Changes file in the kernel source. Basically any modern distro like Fedora Core 1, Mandrake 9.2, SuSE 9, Gentoo, Debian-unstable or whatever can all compile and boot 2.6 kernels without any real problems.

      --
      SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
    2. Re:Requirements? by incuso · · Score: 2, Informative

      In the ~linux-src/Documentation/Changes you can find all the tools that need to be upgraded (most of them only if you are actually using them). M.

  44. Re:RPM for Fedora (Yum) ?? by inode_buddha · · Score: 4, Informative

    ftp ://ftp.dc.aleron.net/pub/linux/fedora/linux/core/d evelopment

    --
    C|N>K
  45. Re:interesting hardware comp by Hoser+McMoose · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The hardware specifications weren't very complete, but from what I can see from IBM's x335 configuration they were using the no-L3 cache Xeons. A 3.2GHz Xeon with 1MB of L3 cache could easily boost the performance 10-20% over a 3.06GHz Xeon with no L3. Of course, the Opteron could still end up leading in a lot of the tests. What's more, the Opteron seems to really come into it's own in 4-processor configurations, where the Xeon scales poorly. In short, the Opteron is a heck of a good chip.

    Where this really looks bad for Intel though is with their Itanium systems. Assuming that those 1.5GHz I2 processors are of the 6MB L3 cache variety, this is Intel's top-end chips. The servers probably won't have the performance of HP or SGI's I2 servers (IBM doesn't care much for the Itanium so they don't invest nearly as much time and effort in the designs as HP or SGI do), the chip still looks pretty weak.

    Intel's saving grace here may be that the Itanium line of chips are VERY dependant on a good compiler, and chances are that these applications were compiled with GCC. Using Intel's ICC instead probably would boost performance by a noticeable margin, though a number of applications still won't compile with ICC from what I understand.

  46. Re:Who cares? OS X kicks both. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    How is that informative? The kernel is Mach and modern *BSD, mostly FreeBSD from what I can tell - not ancient 4.4BSD. While in the latest benchmarks I've seen show Linux leading OS X in server benchmarks on the same hardware, the margin is smaller then the 2.4 > 2.6 margin in the above mentioned article. That is to say, OS X hardly sucks. It can easily keep pace, but not yet surpase. Maybe it never will, but to be even close with a Mach-based kernel is quite impressive. The Mac OS X kernel is called Xnu, and its a melding of of BSD and Mach - its no longer a pure micro-kernel and a lot of the weaknesses of Mach are offset by having many important bits, like TCP/IP, in kernel space rather then some floating server. I've seen those lmbench scores before, and the last ones I saw was comparing a rather old release of OS X to Linux. Try Panther, its noticably faster across the board.

  47. Re:Wish we coulda seen RHEL 2.4 kernel in action by inode_buddha · · Score: 2, Informative
    I use RH with homebrew and "stock" kernels. Not sure how it compares in absolute numbers. My gut feeling (just desktop use) is that the -mm (Andrew Morton) kernels are currently a tad quicker, but RH patches their kernels like crazy for better HW support and misc bugfixes.

    I'd like to see how much of -mm ends up in the RH kernels in a year or so. I did try 2.4.20 with the -ck patches; 2.6 still felt better. Dunno if the info helps at all, but figured I'd mention it.

    FWIW, 2 machines here:
    Dual PPro at 200 MHz, 1Mb caches, 128 megs EDO
    Dual P3 Coppermines at 1GHz, 1024 megs PC133.

    --
    C|N>K
  48. Re:RPM for Fedora (Yum) ?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://people.redhat.com/arjanv/2.6/readme.txt

  49. Devices no longer renamed.... by sakshale · · Score: 2, Insightful
    For instance, the first-seen SCSI device will remain as device sda, using the serial number of the device as an identifier regardless of the order in which it's found during a later boot.

    Sweet! This was my one pet peeve when using Linux on a production server, such as a tape backup systems.
    --
    For every problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious and wrong.
  50. Re:Who cares? OS X kicks both. by be-fan · · Score: 2, Informative

    Read the OpenDarwin FAQ: here.

    The code is mostly 4.4BSD-Lite2. There is a good thread on OSNews about OS X that goes into comparing the source code, and it supports the idea that, while there are many changes, most parts of the BSD subsystem is still plain 4.4BSD-Lite2 code.

    --
    A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
  51. Why don't these get modded offtopic by bangular · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I may be the only one to feel this way... but haven't the completely unrelated SCO jokes gotten a little old? They are completely offtopic 99% of the time and most of them are just "Where do I send my 699 dollars".

  52. Re:HELP: Where can I browse Linux kernel sources? by kasperd · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'd love to browse around sources without having to download a tarball using only my web browser.

    That is possible. The best place I know is The Linux Cross-Reference.

    --

    Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
  53. from the bang-bang dept. by HalliS · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is what the 2.4. kernel had to say about this:

    Bang bang it shot me down
    Bang bang I hit the ground
    Bang bang that awful sound
    Bang bang my brother shot me down

    I was 2.4 and he was 2.6
    We rode on horses made of sticks
    He wore black and I wore white
    He could always win the fight
    ...

    Yeah, I know it's pretty crappy, but it's past my bedtime and I'm tired ^_^

    --


    My other UID is 1337
  54. Switching to the new kernel I lost 50% performance by incuso · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I am using a P4 hyperthread processor. Back in the 2.4.x days /proc/cpuinfo showed me two processors. Now it shows me only one! Where is the lost one? Linus, give it me back! Maybe this is the reason his mozilla is faster now? Anyway, the PCs seems as fast as before, that means that the 2.6.x kernel is able to gain a 100% performance with only one processor ? :) M.

  55. 2.6 on server! by greppling · · Score: 2, Informative
    The fact is, 2.6 is considered extremely stable on servers by those who use it. (It's a little more problematic on the desktop where a big variety of hardware needs to be supported, and one of the drivers you need might not be so well-tested yet.)

    In fact, some of the more server-oriented developers were so content with the stability of 2.5 early on that they started making mild pushes towards a 2.6.0 release almost a year ago.