Linux Kernel 2.6.4 Released

justinarthur writes "The Linux kernel version 2.6.4 has been released at 03:16 UTC. Included in the changes from version 2.6.3 are fixes to XFS support, Wide Area Networking, USB connectivity, and IEEE1394 connectivity. To download a copy, it is recommended that one utilizes a Linux Kernel Archives mirror. Linus Torvalds' announcement to the Linux Kernel Mailing list concerning this release is available here." Reader k-zed points out that Linux 1.0 was released in March 1994, ten years ago.

Comments

Re:new kernel

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandrake 10 is (look for the story from yesterday) Also you can get 2.6 from gentoo and debian, though not default

did you report it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Copy down the numbers from the kernel panic.
I know it's a pain, but we really need this.
If you're terribly lazy, just get EIP, ESP,
and any names you see.

Mail that to linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org and
expect a few questions about your hardware.

That's not so difficult, is it? This gets the
bug fixed so that the next release will run on
your system.

Partitioning md devices

[rpozz]

Finally they've included mdpart. This means anyone with a SATA RAID motherboard can use its full potential. Excellent :-)

Re:new kernel

[damballah]

For MandrakeLinux 10, it is the default kernel. They also provide the latest from the 2.4 series, but you'll have to install that by hand. By "integration", they probably mean dropping devfsd in favor of udev... " I assumed the 2.6 was some addon I have to waste precious brain cells and time trying to figrure out how to install." Mandrake has had RPMs for the 2.6 series for some time now.

How many have upgraded and then gone back?

[steelerguy]

So I went to the 2.6 series when they first came out. I was very happy with it at work, there was a noticable bump in speed...mainly in starting applications.

At home it was another story. Sure the speed increases I noticed at work were still there but there were some fairly large problems.

First, neither my DVD reader or CD burner were assigned /dev entries. So no reading CD's, DVD, or writing CD's. I honestly don't do it that much anyway, so I didn't spend a lot of time trouble shooting it. Plus after a day at work trouble shooting problems I don't feel like doing it at home.

Second, I have not been able to mount my USB flash drive. It is an MP3 player which I changed CD's on weekly so I am not listening to the same stuff at the gym every day. Well after a few weeks of Outkast it was time for a change so I sat down to fix the problem. Two hours later, I just went back to the 2.4 kernel.

I have gotten as far as getting the kernel to assign sda to my usb device but it never creates an entry in /dev and the /sys stuff is not mountable. Enabling USB debugging just shows me that things are messed up but does not really help much.

I also started to get annoyed with all the SCSI emulation needed to mount a USB storage device. I don't understand how Linus can hate SCSI emulation so much when it comes to burning CD's yet it is perfectly acceptable to use it to mount a USB disk. Seems a bit hypocritical, but then again...he did sort of invent Linux so I guess I can cut him some slack.

So all in all, I have been disappointed in the 2.6.x series of kernels and if they are the one's that are supposed to take the desktop market by storm then I think Linux on the desktop is in trouble. It is no wonder Redhat and SuSE are staying away from it for the most part right now. It is going to take both of them a lot of work to get everything working properly I would imagine.

Am I the only one who went back?

Re:How many have upgraded and then gone back?

[Abcd1234]

Are you using devfs? Did you try to migrate to udev (since devfs is deprecated)? Did you try to manually create those device entries and just use them, so you can at least make sure the device drivers work?

As for /sys, you compiled sysfs into the kernel, right? If so, it should be automatically mounted (well, at least, it is on my box). You also need the following fstab entry, in order to mount usbfs:

none /sys/bus/usb usbfs defaults 0 0

Re:new kernel

[MeanSolutions]

The problem with Linux lately is the annoying lack of stability and binary backward compatability.

I have noticed very little, if anything, breaking when I moved from 2.4.21 to 2.6.x on SuSE 9.0, a distro compiled for and shipped with a 2.4 kernel.


For example, the new threading libraries break all sorts of applications until you recompile the apps against the new library. This is particularly painful with commercial applications or for companies that need to provide support.

Sun, IBM, HP, etc have all been able to enhance the functionality of their proprietary Unix systems without breaking binary compatability. It is a shame that the linux kernel people do not care to do so.


That has absolutely nothing to do with the kernel "Linux". That has to do with updates to glibc and pthreads libraries. There is nothing preventing you from running a glibc2.1 with a kernel 2.0.5, 2.2.10, 2.4.18 or 2.6.4 running on top of it.

Re:Anyone know what Rusty is talking about here?

[Svennig]

And the quote is:

/* "to look upon me as her own dad -- in a very real, and legally binding sense." - Michael Palin */