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Linux Kernel 2.6.6 Released
maradong writes "The new Linux Kernel 2.6.6 has been released just 2 hours ago. The Patch from version 2.6.5 to 2.6.6, which can be downloaded on kernel.org measures 2.4MiB and the Changelog can be found at the known place."
Or Men In Black?
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For one, it's only the source that's released, and it's not directly connected
to any end user product. Ordinary users need not care, they should update and install a new kernel whenever it's released by their linux distribution vendor. Which isn't all that diffrent from "Windows Update".
The kernel.org releases are not just bugfixes, it's heaps of new features
as well usually.
'Linux developers aren't as diligent about testing
the code before they release it.'
That's because linux users can fix any faults they find and send them to the developers.
If I have a fault in my linux kernel I tend to fix it, and tell others how to fix it, that's a lot more diligance from the developers than Microsoft(or any closed source software/hardware) provides.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Foelisted for daring to suggest that the bastard known as MiB (along with KiB, GiB, TiB...) is somehow more correct or "better" than the well-known, universally accepted, industry standard MB (kB, GB, TB...).
As another poster has already mentioned, MiB is just a made-up atrocity (it's not even a real ISO standard!) which noone needs or wants.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
No,
Linux updates = good
Microsoft updates = good
Whatever keeps those crappy windows worms at bay is great. The problem with windows updates is:
1) They don't happen often enough
2) They break things
3) They change license while you're not looking
If you're still having problems, I can break it down into even simpler terms.
Yeah... because Win2k SP2 didn't break any drivers at all...
If I lived in this strange world that a lot of slashdotters do where hardware apparently works easily and reliably with Windows, I would have never switched to Linux. But, in my world, Windows never loads the right drivers, and loses or breaks the drivers once you install them.
All's true that is mistrusted
I wish that I could just patch the bits of the kernel that are important to me, and not the whole lot in one go.
/kernel/drivers/net/eci100 and nothing else.. (preferably from kernel configuration).
I would be far more lightly to test betas if I could download driver and filing system updates that relate to me instead of the whole kernel which may have new less stable featuers, my build times would be lower and my system would be more stable.
It would also make it easier to upgrade everything except the broken Nvidia bits....
Oh, I wish i could just patch
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I'm still shocked that Mibibabyboobybytes has been accepted as a "standard!"
How many thousands of titles (possibly billions of books) have been written based on the FACT that Megabytes and Kilobytes, et al, have all been BASE-2 from the initial concept?
The ONLY people in the entire industry who considers MB/KB/et al to be in base-10 are the hard drive manufacturers, and that's just so they can claim their 230GB drives are 250GB!
You don't go out and buy a 536.89MB stick of RAM, you buy a 512MB stick!
Your video card doesn't have 134.22MB of video RAM, it has 128MB!
I don't know why, I should be used to it by now, but the "standards bodies" still blow my mind with their utter stupidity.
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
If you wanted an SI unit of information, it would be more sensible to use 10 bits as the basic unit (or even one bit), rather than a byte (which is actually not even a fixed unit, but is usually read as 'octet'). Attempting to graft MB = 10^6 bytes is at least as arbitary (even more so, IMHO) than defining MB = 2^20 bytes.
In SI, the value of M, k, G etc. are not dependent on the unit it prefixes. True, 'byte' is not a standard SI unit, but consistency is still a Good Thing. And orthoganility too: it means the unit defines what you are talking about, and the prefix indicates how many of them you've got. It means that if you could fit 42 bytes per meter on a fictive tape, you can fit 42 kilobyte on a kilometer and not 41.015625 kilobyte per kilometer.
Is the SI prefixes are not useful for a speficif purpose, fine, don't use them. But don't take them and give them another meaning. If you want to use your own prefixes, go ahead and use new names for them.
Now, I agree kibi, mibi etc. sound pretty lame; perhaps someone should come up with better names, but we should stop using M when we don't mean 10^6.
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
3/5 through the lifespan of the 2.6 kernel? WTF?? The kernel after 2.6.9 will be 2.6.10, not 2.7.0. For example, the current 2.4 kernel is 2.4.26...
2.6.0 is not as reliable as 2.4.26 because the latter has had 26 updates to get things "right". This is just the way things work in kernel development.
The 2.6 series has broken a few things, largely because:
Would I run 2.6 on a mission-critical highly-buzzword-enabled enterprise server? Not yet. Do I run it on my desktop? Abso-fucking-lutely.
Of course, I've done Nvidia a bit of a favor, buying six of their video cards. Which would have been another brand if they hadn't released linux drivers.
-MDL
Happy meals fund terrorism
Not everyone who uses Linux is a kernel hacker, especially nowadays. And yes, there are sites out there that give rundowns of what has changed. But wouldn't it be nice to have an *official* release statement that outlines the changes made? It seems logical to me that the people managing the changes would be able to articulate this the best. I think it would go a long way in making Linux seem a bit more mature.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I think the early part of an even numbered release is always prone to bugs/instability/rapid activity. 2.4 had some major issues in the beginning too, I think i2o was broken around 2.4.10, along with code rewrites of seemingly important areas. I'm not sure if I ever got to use power managment stuff properly in 2.4.
Just as with 2.2 -> 2.4, I think people will stick with 2.4:
a) as long as possible (if it isn't broken, don't fix it)
b) until 2.6 is "more stable".
c) as soon as they could be bothered upgrading to 2.6
I remember I stayed with 2.2 until 2.4.12 came out. Not everyone "needs" 2.6. But this time, I did. I was running 2.4.18-ac2-rcxyz since my machine was too "new" for linux. Various release after that worked great (I have a 2.4.20 patched kernel that did everthing I want), but support for OpenGL accelerated software has come and gone (working for 2.6.5/X v4.3.0.1), not to mention ALSA sounding like it was "under water".
This time, I've been playing with 2.5.x and pretty much kept up with 2.6 releases.
They had to bump it to 2.6 at some stage, or else it would never get to where (I think) we want 2.6 to be.
I don't think computer science needs those foolish names and unit changes to ensure complexity in the units. It is not a commercial game.
Computer science started by changing the names (the meaning of the names, actually). In order to reduce complexity, we need to undo that change.
KISS is the rule.
Exactly.
What is the simplest:
- k equals 1000, Ki equals 1024
or
- k equals 1000 in all sciences, except in computer science where it means 1024, most of the time. If followed by 'B' it mostly means 1024, when followed by 'b' it means 1024 when talking about memory sizes and 1000 when talking about transmission speeds. It all depends on the context.
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
Network speeds have always been done in decimal. 10base{5,2,T} = 10 Mb = 10,000,000 bits per second. And Ethernet (in its 10base5 Thicknet variant) is old, dating from 1972. It's not just greedy hard disk manyfacturers.
I don't have a problem with disambiguating them. I just wish the names weren't as stupid. (MiB is okay, but mebibyte?!)
Aah. Nail, head. Hit.
It's controversial, it's quite probably needed, yet it's given names that sound so childish that it's simply going to inflame people against adopting them.
Maybe if they'd tried coming up with terms that actually sounded a little more serious then they wouldn't be quite so hotly contested.
TiggsTiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."