Linux Kernel 2.6.14 Released

digitalderbs writes "Linux kernel 2.6.14 was released on 10-28. OSnews reports on new features like 'HostAP, FUSE, the linux port of the plan9's 9P protocol, netlink connector, relayfs, securityfs, centrino's wireless drivers, support for DCCP (currently a RFC draft, PPTP, full 4 page-table support for ppc64, numa-aware slab allocator, lock-free descriptor lookup' and many other things. The changelog is also available."

Comments

Notable Release

[Doc Ruby]

The "comprehensible changelog" is slashdotted. Why is the high-level feature list of the release such a low priority, though so demanded? I know programmers prefer writing C to writing English (or Finnish, or Hindi, or German). But what good is code people don't install because they don't know what it does for us? There are so many people hanging around OSS projects who can't or don't contribute to the code. Surely some of those people can help by at least distilling the changes into a brief description. Release notes might not be the most important product of a release cycle, but they often control everything that product consumers do after the release is published.

Re:Notable Release

[MoogMan]

Kernels are not intended for the consumer. It is assumed that you have a certain level of understanding to install and configure the Linux Kernel.

Re:Centrino wireless drivers

[BenV666]

That's where they come from. However, the version included in this kernel is a bit lower than the latest release on sourceforge. (1.0 vs 1.0.8 if I'm correct)

Re:huh?

[Kjella]

Wow, there's not a single thing on that list of features that I understand. Either these are names for things I wanted but didn't know the names for, or these are all things I don't need.

If you told me the changes in Ford's latest car engine, I probably wouldn't understand them either, certainly not if I need them or not. Normal people aren't supposed to understand a kernel change log. Device drivers are the odd exception, not the rule (and more often than not have little to do with the kernel, the kernel provides an interface and someone writes a driver to that interface).