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Vanilla Kernel 2.6 Stability vs 2.4?
chromis asks: "I am a 'Linux-from-scratch' like Linux user. I maintain my system for almost 4 years that way. I'm still using kernel 2.4, and I'm a little bit afraid for updating to 2.6 because of the problems like stability issues, driver subsystem problems, etc. I once tried 2.6.0 a long time ago, but I experienced random freezes which I could not diagnose. We all know about the development model issues, and I often read complaints about current kernel development practices. Now that kernel 2.6.13 is out, I really want to ask Slashdot: if you are a vanilla 2.6 kernel user, how are your experiences with these plain kernel.org 2.6 kernels? Is it really as bad as some people claim, or is 2.6 only usable when using a distro from a large vendor like Red Hat, SuSE, etc? I really would like to upgrade to the new vanilla 2.6 kernel eventually, but I'm a little hesitant. Any advice?"
I am running the older kernel and it kept me from getting first post.
Say hello to my little sig.
I use the vanilla kernels with moderately modern hardware (up to about 4 years old) and I have no stability issues whatsoever. I tend to stay within one or two versions of the bleeding edge release.
The advantages of the 2.6 kernels (udev, nptl, device driver model) outweigh the disadvantages (i.e. risk) for my situation, in my opinion.
That said, I still use linux-2.4 on my headless server, mainly because I haven't been bothered to upgrade it recently. It works fine, so I see little point in changing it.
I've used various incarnations of 2.6 on my mythtv box. It's under fairly high load, with memory, video and disk intensive processes, has high PCI utilisation (2 capture cards, sometimes running at once). It runs 24/7, sometimes hot enough to get the CPU temp alarm beeping.
Number of times it's had a kernel panic over the last year? Zero. Good enough for me.
And as other posters have said, the advantages with hardware, latency patches, acpi support help too.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
I can't speak for the vanilla kernel, but the Gentoo 2.6.13 kernel borked my system something fierce. The init process grinds to an virtual stop just after loading the kernel, it took a minute and a half to set the host name, I still haven't had the patience let it finish booting. But that's the risk of using a fresh kernel. 2.6.12 didn't give me any trouble.
A Free Market requires informed intelligent consumers, such people are rare, we're in trouble.
I've been using 2.6 for quite a while now (maybe 2.6.3) and for the most part I've liked it. I've had maybe on oops ever and its stable and fast.
(For reference: Distro: Gentoo x86_64)
No real awful speedbumps I couldn't get around except one: Around the 2.6.10 series, ran into some strange data corruption problems with the data in extremely large files (~1GB range per file) when transferring them. Never managed to pin it down strictly to the kernel, so I can't blame it for certain.
Apart from the fact that I need one out-of-tree driver, no issues with vanilla 2.6 ever since 2.6.11.
"The Devil does not know a lot because He's the Devil, He knows a lot because he's old." -- unknown
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
i have used the 2.6 kernel series since it came out. I run Gentoo and i have a few debian systems. I try to keep up with the latest version. the gentoo system has 2.6.13 installed and i have no problems.
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>uname -a && uptime
Linux maverick 2.6.6 #15 SMP Fri Jun 4 19:58:51 EDT 2004 i686 GNU/Linux
21:47:15 up 92 days, 25 min, 2 users, load average: 1.40, 1.38, 1.37
It would be longer, but that's exactly the amount of time it's been since I moved into my house.
2.4 will give you a more stable kernel due to being tested better. I am still sticking with 2.4 on my servers, but just because I'm lazy. :)
I've been running 2.6 on all desktop & laptop systems without problems since 2.6.9 (about a year). I certainly would not want to give up the better interactivity, better MM performance, wide hardware support, and features like udev.
2.6.x will have have hickups now and again because that is where the development occurs. That's why a few kernel hackers (Chris Wright & Greg Kroah-Hartman) started maintaining stable point releases (2.6.12.1, 2.6.12.2, etc) to deal with bug fixes only. If you are concerned about stability on 2.6 you can use these releases. You can get them here: http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/
-- bartman
The 2.6.8 kernel had an issue with CD writing (only root could do this). This has been corrected in later kernels. You may have to delv into the udev rules to get things setup the way you like. Read the fine HOWTO on writing rules for udev.
My cd-rom did not get recognized after boot unless the ide-cd module was called before udev started. There was a mixup with tty and pty in the default udev rules around the time of switch between 2.6.7 and 2.6.8 and it obliterated the 'less' and 'man' commands. How convenient is it that I can't run 'man udev.rules'?
I believe this has also been remedied since then. If in doubt I suggest taking the following steps.
Title of the second document is "The post-halloween document. v0.48 (aka, 2.6 - what to expect)". That should tell you everything you need to know about upgrading from 2.4.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
Why not put both into /boot and add both to your bootloader? There are lots of tutorials for doing that, for 'testing' in case a newly compiled kernel doesn't work.
I have this on my Slackware -current computer. A vanilla 2.4, vanilla 2.6.10, and compiled 2.6.10 which I use and have had no issues with. I plan on compiling 2.6.13 soon, to keep up to date with bug fixes and improvements.
Death by snoo-snoo!
What's a good walkthrough on installing linux from strach?
I've been using the latest 2.6 kernel, patched with Gentoo and Suspend2 patches. I started with 2.6.9, and it had some ACPI problems, but once I upgraded my BIOS to the latest version and upgraded the kernel to 2.6.10, everything worked well. Other than those specific ACPI issues, I've had no general stability problems. Everything works well.
I used to run Slackware, and I have to say that when I upgraded it from a 2.4 kernel to 2.6, the system did perform better. I think that if people just upgrade cautiously, it's fine to have the current kernel in development. Frankly, I appreciate the increases in responsiveness that the newer kernels have, and I like seeing cool new features appear in each kernel version. Why, just this version, they added support for my laptop's temperature sensor chip, which gave me access to the motherboard sensor in addition to the CPU one which is accessible via ACPI.
I don't know what all the fuss is about, but 2.6 has been great for me.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
You're an LFS Linux user ("Linux-from-scratch like" Linux user as you put it), and you're concerned about upgrading your kernel?
Since you cross-compiled and built your libraries, compiler, toolchain, etc from scratch, why are you worried about upgrading your kernel? Surely, you know that it's trivial to modify your boot loader so you can boot multiple kernels and try them out without consequence to your system.
Second, why are you interested in using a Vanilla 2.6 kernel if you built your entire Linux system from scratch?
Please pardon me if I'm mistaken, but you certainly don't sound like a 'tweaker'. Your question is analogous to: "I'm a die hard car tuner, I've modded my hotrod and tweaked my cam's, changed my gear ratios and added 2 inches to my manifold: Should I use premium gasoline in my new Hot Rod?"
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
This is just my personal opinion, but I'm not really comfortable with 2.6 until they make a 2.7 to toss all the gee-whiz development stuff in to, which they seem to still be using 2.6 for. Until then, mentally I classify 2.6 as a development/unstable kernel, and don't use it for much. I have a couple friends that have had good luck, and some that have horrid luck. One of our servers at work has some very, very odd issues with 2.6, and there are others that won't run 2.4 without patched drivers and the like out the wazoo. I use 2.6 for my desktop machine and it seems OK, although there are a couple weird things.
Just a question : what stops you from adding this new kernel to your grub or LILO and stress test it in any condition you think will cause a freeze ?
I mean there are few things as easy as installing a new kernel and then removing it later if it doesn't satisfy you...
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
I like the 2.6 kernel over the 2.4 kernel because I can play MP3s and Oggs without skips every time I refocus the window.
On the down side, I'm running Ubuntu 5.04 on a Sony S270 laptop. I use the 2.6.11 when I want sound to work at all and 2.6.10 when I want my touch pad to work right. I've tried a couple of custom compiles of 2.6.10 and 2.6.11 but haven't gotten either to work right yet.
Jim
A dyslexic man walks into a bra.
Have grown to really love 2.6.x kernels. Started back in the low single digits, just upgraded to 13. NO stability issues for me, ever (at least not due to the kernel). The important things to me in 2.6: udev and better response time (switching between windows, etc). Just recently got udev working just the way I like it - can't imagine going back to the old devfs.
So far, my experience with 2.6 has shown that older hardware and 2.6 are a potentially dangerous combination. 2.6 appears to work fine on newer hardware. [Note: I am specifically referring to generic x86 systems.] On older hardware, it can be hit or miss.
There are some great features in 2.6, however for a production environment where it just has to work, the safer bet is 2.4.
For me, it's really pretty annoying. Used to, you could generally count on "released" kernels to be pretty stable (1.2, 2.0), but that no longer seems to be true (again, based on my first hand experience, other people have had different results). 2.4 was the first "released" kernel I felt was not quite ready, but 2.6 especially seems to have been "rushed" out the door.
I've not been following the kernel development as closely as I used to, so perhaps there is a slight redefinition of "released" that I missed. I don't know. What I do know is that I've only seen 2.6 stable on hardware that is newer than 18 months old. My dev servers have finally been upgraded to 2.6, but my personal production servers are still 2.4. I have not decided yet if I will upgrade to 2.6 in production or not.
[2.6 distros tried: Fedora, SuSE, Trustix, Knoppix, {something else, but I forget. 2.6 distros used: SuSE, Trustix.]
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
I tried 1.1 a "long time ago". (11 years or so.) If I'd known that 2.6.0 was available back then, I'd have tried it. (I still keep the Slackware 2.1 CD handy for quicky 486 installs.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I run Slackware, and just started using 2.6 in production a couple of months ago (about when 2.6.12 came out.)
/etc/rc.d/rc.udev restart", it gets old very quickly.
/sys/block/hda/queue.) For the time being, I've switched back to 2.4 for NWN.
So far, I'd recommend staying away from udev - it's just way too flaky for words - it seems OK if your hardware doesn't change, but when you start hotplugging and the device nodes don't show up unless you "sudo
Stability-wise it's OK, I'm using it on two desktops, three servers and my laptop, and haven't had a crash or oops. (Although I've only been running it for a couple of months.)
General desktop performance (KDE) is OK - I saw no noticeable difference from 2.4.
NWN is noticeably slower however - there seems to be a lot more disk thrashing while playing, even though swap is unused and there is a ton of free RAM (I think I might need to tweak something in
I've been using Gentoo for a long time now, and I've compiled and installed every release (including every minor release) since, probably, 2.6.9 . To be honest, I'm not using the vanilla sources, but the "ck" patchset which includes the staircase scheduler (compiled specifically for amd64). Even with these changes, I've found the 2.6 kernels to be the most stable software you can run on a computer. I can't remember one time that my system has crashed (unless I had broken something through my own stupidity). As for hardware, most of the 2.4 drivers have been ported to 2.6. Unless you have some pretty obscure hardware, it will probably be supported; and the 2.6 drivers will probably be significantly more up-to-date. I would very much suggest that you upgrade, the 2.6 kernel has great hardware support, and it is the most responsive and stable platform I've ever used.
I was on the same track. I was stuck in 2.4 land for a long time just because I had gotten my systems to the point where every piece of hardware worked and I knew how to get it all working again if I upgraded my kernel. Like you, I had trouble with the 2.6 kernel upgrade. I tried it once (circa 2.6.4) and it was a catastrophe for my wireless cards (madwifi and centrino). Finally I let Debian sid put in 2.6.12, and it seems all the 3rd party drivers have upgraded to the 2.6 bandwagon.
Configuration: I could run through the 2.4 configure tree in 20 mins or less. It takes me at least twice that in 2.6. Too much IP and an effed up broken patent/copyright system creating too many incompatible devices at levels that aren't easily segmented into kernel layers.
Compilation: Yeah. It takes a lot longer.
Performance: I noticed that mouse response in X is a lot faster. That's probably an artificial representative, though. I haven't really noticed load or response times to be much different from 2.4 to 2.6. Running on 400 MHz machines, I still notice this when it actually improves.
Modules: On a Debian 2.4 kernel I had maybe 12 modules loaded. On a LFS 2.4 kernel I had maybe 4. On Debian 2.6 kernel I have 91 modules loaded and many of them are for hardware which I don't have (see the section on configuration: there are too many devices which look the same to the kernel but are different due to IP pissing matches).
Udev: I hate it. I don't hotplug. I don't want to hotplug. Hotplugging is evil. My system shouldn't be doing anything with a device until I say I'm good and ready for it. Except for hotplugging, there's no real need for udev.
Mostly I'm upgrading to 2.6 because I can't afford to be left in the dust.
PS. No real LFS'er would call it Linux-from-scratch. Lose the hyphens.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
I had trouble with corrupted DVDs (CDs burnt fine) in kernel 2.6.11. This seemed to be magically fixed when I upgraded to 2.6.12.
but I've run vanilla 2.6 kernels since 2.6.5 on four different slackware installs at work and at home: a year old dell dimension P-IV box with an nvidia graphics card, an ancient dell 300 MHz P-II machine, an even more ancient 75 MHz P-I toshiba laptop, and a newish 32 bit AMD / low-end Asus motherboard / ATI graphics card pc built from parts.
Never had any hardware problems with any of them. (Although I haven't upgraded the two older machines since around 6.5 or so - and it's possible I just happened to luck out on those machines in the first place. I've certainly heard bad things about 2.6 on very old hardware.) I'm running 6.12 now happily on both the newer machines. The only real difference is that some of the devices that weren't supported in 2.4 now work great.
I did run into some weirdness getting user space alsa components to behave nicely with the stock 2.6 kernel modules somewhere around the 2.6.5 to 2.6.8, but installing the current cvs version of everything taken directly from the alsa project right over the top of both worked without a hitch every time. The last few new kernel installs have been flawless.
Udev is pretty nice once you get used to it, and leaving scsi emulation behind is a great joy. If a crash won't cause you to be killed, fired, or otherwise endangered, then it couldn't hurt to try 2.6
Built a Hylafax http://hylafax.org/ system on top of the latest v6.1, LFS http://linuxfromscratch.org./
:->, http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/contribute.h tml or a much needed "hints" writeup, http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/.
Details:
3GHz Intel Pentium 4 Processor, 1Gb RAM
11,878.40 BogoMIPS Total, 250Gb Hard Drive
GCC 3.4.3
Samba 3.0.14a
HylaFAX 4.2.1
Gotta say it's way ahead of expectations.
I won't touch another distro now for my mission critical.
Although, Knoppix, http://www.knoppix.org/ and Ubuntoo, http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ are great "insert CD and run" distros, for workstations.
Working with SlackWare seems effortless also, http://www.slackware.org/.
Was fortunate enough to meet the fine gent who started the LFS project: Gerard Beekmans
Highly recommended support for the project, even if it's just $5 for a beer via donations
I've been using FC4 and was using FC3 before that. I've had no problems with the 2.6.12 kernel that I'm currently using. No stability issues. I was having a few issues before this specific revision but sometimes its also hard to figure out if its KDE, GNOME, a specific application, or the kernel. I honestly think that at this point in time its just as stable as 2.4.x but keep in mind that any operating system can freeze at any time for something that nobody has seen before so switching to 2.6.x at this point in time just seems to make sense.
No problem here - I have bog standard hardware and everything works perfectly.
---
jon_edwards@spanners4us.com
changing to 2.6.13 later this week
Uptime------------System----Boot up
62 days, 14:02:05 Linux 2.6.9 Wed Jun 29 19:06:18 2005
90 days, 18:28:05 Linux 2.6.9 Tue Mar 22 20:54:33 2005
28 days, 08:41:03 Linux 2.6.9 Tue Feb 22 12:02:50 2005
31 days, 14:05:41 Linux 2.6.9 Fri Jan 21 19:42:01 2005
49 days, 07:58:12 Linux 2.6.9 Fri Dec 3 11:40:11 2004
31 days, 06:14:18 Linux 2.6.8-rc2 Mon Oct 4 19:32:10 2004
39 days, 16:12:23 Linux 2.6.8-rc2 Thu Aug 26 03:14:37 2004
33 days, 16:05:05 Linux 2.6.8-rc2 Fri Jul 23 10:39:51 2004
60 days, 20:01:02 Linux 2.6.4 Thu Apr 1 23:08:26 2004
25 days, 12:55:43 Linux 2.4.23 Mon Jan 12 01:05:52 2004
Boots often caused by monthly case cleaning operation and on two occasions, power failure.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
i.e. use kernel 2.6.12.6 because it should be more stable than the new 2.6.13.
Kids today are tyrants. They contradict their parent, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. - Socrates 400 BC
...for last 2 months or so, like for a salvation. I want to make that auth system using iButtons and .13 is the first to include full, useful system. (1-wire protocol was present in the kernels before, and in userspace even earlier, but only with .13 it's mature enough to be usable.)
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Just don't upgrade _right now_ to bleeding edge a bleeding edge kernel (2.6.13 in that case). Wait for the dust to settle (two or three weeks) and upgrade. I've done that since early 2.6.0 releases and it works like charm.
Note: You can install triple dotted releases (2.6.x.y asap as they only contain minor upgrades or security fixes)
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I had freezes in 2.6 a long time ago. It was caused by a combination of nforce and IO-APIC. All I had to do what disable APIC in the kernel until the next kernel version was released with a fix. Other than that I've had no problems with 2.6.
Stop being paranoid. If you configure the kernel correctly it wont freeze. And for all the great things 2.6 has to offer I don't know why anyone would choose to use an older kernel if they have a choice.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Rule Number One: for any software, hardware, computer, vehicle, anything -- never buy version .0 unless you are willing to suffer instabilities.
Rule Number Two: See Rule Number One
You said you suffered instabilities in the 2.6.0 release. No .. duh!
I thought you would be more concerned with their change in practice to do away with the odd/even stable/development model that they used up to kernel 2.4. As I understand it, now all the development problems are rolled into the kernel intended for public use. I think this will come back to bite them in the ass.
"I'm an old slashdot user. I'm afraid people on slashdot wouldnt understand my perfectly understandable and clear point in a computer related discussion, so I make an analogy with cars."
I am using a plain vanilla kernel (2.6.13) on my Slackware 10.1 system, and it's very very stable. The earliest 2.6 kernels were a bit unstable for me, but since 2.6.8 or so, they have been very very stable. I notice that my self-configured 2.6.13 kernel is faster than the Slackware vanilla kernel (2.4.29). GNOME responses faster to my actions, for example.
objorkum dot com
self-sufficient linux user for 4 years doing Linux from Scratch, and you don't know how to flip between kernels?
I ran continuously from 2.5.56 (after my SCSI driver started working again) until 2.6.13 ? or so that was out about 4 weeks ago.
Had virtually no kernel related problems.
Then I switched to Windows.
Life is much easier now.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I switched from 2.4.x to 2.6.7 when it came out, and haven't had a single problem. Some of the newer ones seem iffy, but 2.6.7 is rock-solid as far as I can tell.
I still prefer to use 2.4.x series kernels in servers, just to have that extra insurance (the servers I run have very little need for the features in 2.6.7), but desktop machines get 2.6.7 all the way.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
That's just fucking fantastic.
I had read previously that devfs was going to remain for the life of 2.6. Of course, with the constant turmoil happening in 2.6 development, I really shouldn't be surprised.
Yay, more fun stuff to deal with down the line.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
So far, so good, though I recommend waiting for the stable patch series to iron out any brown-paper-bag bugs:
root@prodserver:~$ uptime
08:22:38 up 89 days, 21:59, 2 users, load average: 0.08, 0.06, 0.01
root@prodserver:~$ uname -a
Linux nli-aus-srv01 2.6.11.11 #1 SMP Thu Jun 2 09:36:16 CDT 2005 i686 GNU/Linux
The machine has had related problems with earlier 2.6 kernels. It seems that Linux is making use of hardware more and more aggressively, and 2.6 will tell flaky hardware more easily. I can't really blame ReiserFS because the problem was obviously related to that particular hardware, but I also had a couple of JFS partitions that were intact, so at least in this case JFS is more robust.
Other than that, I've had very few problems with the 2.6 series. There were some problems with DVD writing in early releases; I had some DVDs written in 2.6.1 that were only readable with the same kernel :)
I'd say go for it, you can always go back to 2.4 if things break. Oh, and make backups :)
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
In my experience the SCSI subsystem was rather messy in 2.6.11. It didn't matter which host provider you used (or if you use the ATA one for SATA or CD/DVD burners) it just wasn't stable. I'm also finding that 2.6.12.x is much more stable all around.
-Carl "No, we already thought of that one. 'Why?' '42' - It doesn't fit." -Hitchhiker'
I have several machines with older 2.6 kernels and more than a year of uptime so for me it's been stable. I also have a few that I just upgraded to 2.6.12.4 recently that seem to be working fine. You really do need to make sure your modutils and maybe other user land tools (does anyone have a list?) is up to date and be cautious about enabling some of the new features but I havn't run into any unresolvable problems since switching. One annoyance is that you cannot just slap a kernel on a floppy and boot from that anymore.
I was using a 2.4 kernel and some nVidia drivers. I upgraded to Fedora Core 3, which had the 2.6.9 kernel I believe. Configuring the nVidia drivers was a nightmare, I ended up using an unofficial version patched by someone, version 6111 I think.
The first thing I noticed with 2.6 is that something changed for the worse in memory management - closing programs which eat up a lot of RAM make the system completely unresponsive for several seconds. Then I started getting crashes (kernel oops) when doing OpenGL development (but, for some reason, not while using OpenGL intensive games such as Enemy Territory).
What I finally got to work is kernel 2.6.12 (from FC3 updates) and nVidia driver 7676. The slowness when deallocating lots of memory is still there though.
My website
I am a Gentoo user and my linux box is my baby. I am very careful about what I load and am constantly making sure that I use what I have installed and only really install things that I feel confident will not aversely affect the performance and stability of my system. I stuck with 2.4 until recently, diligently upgrading when bugfixes were released. I had my kernel configuration down to a science. Less than the 20 minutes you described. All this new stuff--ALSA, udev, ACPI, new module loading tools, etc.--I didn't really want to take the time to mess with a good thing. However, these features intrigued me, as did the new scheduler, and various performance improvements. I eventually took the plunge and am very happy. I am using the Gentoo-patched sources, but hopefully your experience will be similar to mine.
/sbin/poweroff finally does what it is supposed to. Plus, IDE CD-burning is now functioning. I say if you are not running a critical machine (and by that I mean, a server for a business, give it a shot. I am much happier in 2.6. It has been out long enough to be considered stable. Maybe stick to 2.6.12 if you are really worried (that's what I've been running).
It's been quite stable, X/GNOME is faster, ALSA works great, and best of all
I started using 2.6 when it first came out, rolling my own kernels from vanilla and sticking them on my Slackware box. Personally, I have had very few issues. The only hardware I had to disable in the kernel was some sensors that used the i2c stuff (on a Asus A7N8X mobo), but that was fixed in 2.6.3 (I think that was the version...). IMO, rolling your own from vanilla 2.6 is a good, stable solution. Getting that triple-digit uptime you seek is not an issue, unless the power goes out. ;-)
"The chief enemy of creativity is 'good taste'" -Pablo Picasso
you insensitive clod!
STABILITY
/sys directory need to be mounted and hotplug probably needs to be aware of it if your version is old.
The 2.4 kernels are older and more mature; you could easily argue they have been tested more and are therefore considerably less prone to bugs than the 2.6 kernels. However the 2.6 kernel is significantly larger and more complex so two points apply: 1. there is a larger area for bugs to crop up, and 2. since it is quite different than the 2.4 kernels there is also the possiblity that the source is cleaner and of a higher quality architecture and therefore may be LESS prone to bugs, but this is just one theorey; it may work backwards just the same.
COMPATIBILITY
There are endless binary-only modules and HALs which were built for 2.2 and 2.4 kernels which will not work at all in 2.6 kernels. If you need to support legacy modules/devices, 2.6 is not the way to go - yet. Other miscellaneous drivers like the UMSDOS drivers were not even working when I tried the 2.6.10 kernel. Also some tools have to be upgraded to allow 2.6 kernel modules to work, and things like the
If your curent kernel is working, why take the risk of upgrading it to more recent kernel? Ok, I see the point in doing so for machines with no risks, like a old lappy or something, but why on a server? If your server works fine, why fix it? why fix something that is not broken? Ok ok, this is just me. I run debian stables with kernel 2.4.27 on my servers, and they all work fine. I keep my system clean, no windows viruses, rarely being tried hacked etc. "it sounds boring, why?" Why? because there is soooo many things I wanna do instead of fixing my servers.
On my lappy I have 2.6.8 and it works nicely. It is in my opinion to fresh for my likings but since it works I don't care. On my old lappy(soon to be garbage, and have been in win eyes for years) I try to keep it as fresh as possible, but only for testing purposes, I like to test new things, it is the human nature. But not on my servers, no no no. I repeat, no no no. If I want problems I'll go back to windoze.
I can't speak much on Vanilla kernels, but I do use CentOS 4 with the recompiled RHEL 2.6 version of the kernel, and it has had no problems.
[user@megan ~]# uname -a
Linux megan.nerdshack.com 2.6.9-5.0.3.ELsmp #1 SMP Sat Feb 19 15:45:14 CST 2005 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[user@megan ~]# uptime
15:31:30 up 156 days, 13:48, 1 user, load average: 0.30, 0.21, 0.23
My WBEL 3 box still uses the 2.4 kernel.
[root@cp root]# uname -a
Linux cp.razorsites.com 2.4.21-20.ELsmp #1 SMP Thu Sep 16 14:07:31 EDT 2004 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
[root@cp root]# uptime
16:21:44 up 294 days, 5:15, 1 user, load average: 0.16, 0.28, 0.46
Before you get carried away though, I'll say that I have a Dell 2650 which I use for development and testing, and it runs FC3. The original FC3 SMP kernel ran fine, but the all of the upgrades have caused kernel panics on boot. My guess would be that the newer kernels don't handle the ReiserFS partition properly, and that causes the crash, but I haven't had time to dig. The result is that I'm stuck on 2.6.9. I plan to try upgrading to FC4 soon.
The biggest problems I have with using a very-recent kerenl is that sometimes some of the not-included modules which I need to compile from source just don't seem to like my newer kernel. At the moment I'm having a bugger of a time getting 'unionfs' to compile with a 2.6.13 kernel, and I do remember at one time that my NVidia drivers didn't like certain 2.6 kernels either.
Once something compiles though, I generally don't have kernel problems with common hardware.
I think the 2.6 stability stuff has been blown way out of proportion, most of the "instabilities" out there are corner cases that don't affect that many people. No there are bugs and they get fixed and there are big change lists for Linus' tree but that's the case for 2.4 too, just not that many are getting fixed.
Since 2.6 came out, I've seen exactly 1 bug that really mattered or affected any of my stuff and it was a memory leak that was pretty slow and I only ever noticed it because the machine it happened on is diskless. I've got a dual 250 opteron, a dual 242 opteron, a via C1 (diskless firewall with a flash), a P4, an older celeron, a dual PowerPC G4, and a couple machines at work. It has been awesome on somethings, noticably faster and more responsive.
Now I don't know what the standard of stability you're using is, Debian's "it must run for a decade and then we'll ship it" policy? If you're running fairly vanilla stuff, it'll work great and you won't have problems, you'll have long uptimes and won't even be able to point at something lacking..
I find Unofficial Download page of Windows Vista Beta 1 here: windows vista download
I use Kernel 2.6.11. It runs great and never have any trouble with it. I was thinking about going to 2.6.13 but 2.6.11 working great so why upgrade. 2.6 is faster than the old 2.4 but if its working great for you and your able to do every thing you want then stay with it. Why upgrade when every thing works.
Linux, because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.