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Linux 2.6.16 released

diegocgteleline.es writes "Linux 2.6.16 has been released after two months and two weeks of development. You can check the comprehensible changelog (text mirror of the site). The new features include OCFS2, a clustering filesystem contributed by Oracle, new unshare(), pselect()/ppoll() and *at() system calls, support the moving of the physical location of pages between nodes in NUMA systems, support for the Cell processor, cpufreq support for G5s plus thermal control for dualcore G5s, improved power management support for many devices and subsystems (libata, alsa...), a new mutex locking primitive, high-resolution timers, per-mountpoint noatime/nodiratime, 64-to-32-bit ioctl compatibility for the v4l2 subsystem, IPv6 support for DCCP, the TIPC protocol (Transparent Inter Process Communication, ACL support for CIFS filesystem, HFSX filesystem support, new configfs filesystem (which complements sysfs, not replaces it), support for running executables from v9fs (plan9 9P distributed filesystem), support for many new devices, improved support for others and lots of other changes. Check it out from kernel.org"

277 comments

  1. But.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    does it run Linux?

    1. Re:But.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    2. Re:But.... by imikem · · Score: 1

      Nah, Linus finally decided that BSD was the right way all along, and quietly slipped the change in...

      --
      Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
    3. Re:But.... by Surt · · Score: 1

      I think it does, right? You can run vmware on it and run linux in virtualization, right?

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    4. Re:But.... by CarpetShark · · Score: 2, Insightful

      VMWare isn't required. Linux can run Linux :)

    5. Re:But.... by HermanAB · · Score: 2, Funny

      You'd think - until you encounter a really old web server running RedHat 6.2. It almost completely, but not quite, doesn't run Linux... ;)

      --
      Oh well, what the hell...
    6. Re:But.... by LittLe3Lue · · Score: 1

      Thats it.

      Its final.

      The reason for the PS3 delay is so linux could properly support the Cell processor.

      Now its only a matter of time.

  2. Inconcievable! by old_skul · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Comprehensible"? I do not think that word means what you think it means.

    1. Re:Inconcievable! by slavemowgli · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's definitely much more comprehensible than the automatically-generated changelog, at least.

      --
      quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
    2. Re:Inconcievable! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, the usage is correct in this case. The full changelog has nothing but single fix entries which hardly give a good picture of what was actually changed in the kernel. A comprehensible changelog gives an overview of the changes rather than a patch-by-patch listing. Therefore, it is more comprehensible for someone outside of kernel development.

    3. Re:Inconcievable! by escay · · Score: 1

      yea...don't you mean 'comprehensive'?

    4. Re:Inconcievable! by wile_e_wonka · · Score: 1

      "Anybody want a peanut?"

    5. Re:Inconcievable! by FridayBob · · Score: 1

      "Comprehensible"?

      Well, as opposed to the old changelog, which was so muddled and complex as to be incomprehensible. The new version is a definite improvement. ;-)

    6. Re:Inconcievable! by j79zlr · · Score: 1

      "i" before "e" except after.....

      --
      I'm not not licking toads.
    7. Re:Inconcievable! by diegocgteleline.es · · Score: 1

      And it's the...linux kernel changelog. I mean, there're things there that you're not going to understand if you don't understand a bit of kernel internals, just like you won't understand many details from the X.org changelog if you know nothing about graphics

    8. Re:Inconcievable! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow! Better than an automatically-generated changelog. Sweet!

      I bet it's more stable than Windows for Workgroups, too!

  3. Obligatory question... by the_humeister · · Score: 1

    Any point in me upgrading the kernel from 2.6.14? My suspicion is for myself is "no" since everything still works as usual. Alright, maybe I'll just go download and compile it.

    1. Re:Obligatory question... by Duketape · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yes, there are bugs in previous versions. These bugs were found with coverity and resolved in 2.6.16.

    2. Re:Obligatory question... by smittyoneeach · · Score: 2, Funny

      Hey, man, in the grandest governmetn tradition: if it ain't broke, fix it until it is. ;)

      --
      Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
    3. Re:Obligatory question... by frodo+from+middle+ea · · Score: 2, Informative
      In any case, what's the harm, you can have multiple kernel present on your system. If the new one doesn't boot, you can always boot back the old one.

      All this provided, the new one doesn't fuck up your system, which I highly doubt will be the case.

      --
      for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
    4. Re:Obligatory question... by garcia · · Score: 2, Informative

      Any point in me upgrading the kernel from 2.6.14?

      1. Read the changelog. Do you see anything in there that applies to you (new features, bugs that you have encountered that are now fixed, or serious security updates)?

      2. Do you have any stability issues with 2.6.14?

      3. Are you really that concerned with upgrading your kernel again? It's not a status symbol afterall.

      4. I'm still running 2.4.x because I have no need to run 2.6.x (I use it strictly as a console machine) Linux supplication 2.4.32 #4 Tue Jan 3 18:35:16 CST 2006 i686 GNU/Linux

    5. Re:Obligatory question... by ookaze · · Score: 5, Informative

      It depends really.
      Lately, the kernel has put lots of improvements for desktop frameworks.
      For example, 2.6.15 put forth uevent for managing devices. Wich the latest udev needs.
      Udev keeps being more and more powerful, and latest hal takes advantage of it, and DE like Gnome and KDE also take advantage of this.
      For the desktop, power management (and suspend) is the reason to go 2.6.16.
      Most distros still don't use these features, but I already do, and some tools already use even the 2.6.16 features (no kidding).
      That means you don't have to go 2.6.16 now, but eventually, distro will have to install it if they want to upgrade their desktop features on Linux.
      The kernel and all the Utopia framework that goes with it.

      Udev is still moving fast, some distro are stuck at udev 036. We are already at udev 087 (unusable on anything below linux 2.6.15) !!

    6. Re:Obligatory question... by SkunkPussy · · Score: 2, Funny

      3. Are you really that concerned with upgrading your kernel again? It's not a status symbol afterall.

      4. I'm still running 2.4.x because I have no need to run 2.6.x (I use it strictly as a console machine) Linux supplication 2.4.32 #4 Tue Jan 3 18:35:16 CST 2006 i686 GNU/Linux


      But yet you've bothered to compile the latest 2.4.x release?! Do you see still running 2.4 as some kind of inverted status symbol? :)

      Having said that, they still don't have as good SW RAID support in 2.6 as they did in 2.4 (in the most recent 2.6 I've tried, dmraid/lilo don't allow you to boot from a proprietary HighPoint SW RAID-0 disc, whereas this was perfectly achievable in 2.4 - so instead of dual booting, I am forced to use a bootable usb flash drive to get into linux!!).

      --
      SURELY NOT!!!!!
    7. Re:Obligatory question... by sycomonkey · · Score: 1

      Either there was a bug, or (much more likely) I configured it wrong, but I had some issues with my new 2.6.15 kernel I built the other day for a new attempt at using this fine OS on a more persistant basis (well, until I can afford a mac...). Dmesg mostly complained about the timer missing ticks, and this new version has a lot of timer code changes, so I wonder if it will (directly or indirectly) fix my problem...

      --
      --The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
    8. Re:Obligatory question... by MacJedi · · Score: 1
      But yet you've bothered to compile the latest 2.4.x release?! Do you see still running 2.4 as some kind of inverted status symbol? :)

      I'm not the parent poster, but that strategy (sticking with 2.4) seems prudent to me-- especially for a console machine. All my new linux installs get 2.6.x but anything that currently has 2.4 on it will stay with 2.4.x until that box reaches end-of-life (which with any luck could be years from now.) And, yes, that involves periodically compiling and rebooting into the latest 2.4 kernel. Running 'make oldconfig' on a very mature kernel tree is really any work at all.

      --
      2^5
    9. Re:Obligatory question... by Cramer · · Score: 1

      kernel ... ro ... md=d0,0,2,0,/dev/sda,/dev/sdb,/dev/sdc,/dev/sdd root=/dev/md/d0p0

      *whistles innocently*

      It can be done. With the removal of ataraid, the kernel will not automatically detect them. Some smarty thought it was better to force everyone to use an initrd and 100% userland crap to setup one's root volume. *I* think forcing anyone to use an initrd is a patently stupid f'ing idea. Doing so makes it trivial to break a system, and difficult to repair.

  4. Cell by cosmotron · · Score: 3, Interesting

    support for the Cell processor

    I guess the PS3 HDD with Linux was true...

    --
    Ryan - http://www.thecosmotron.com/
    1. Re:Cell by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Informative

      Keep in mind that Sony is a Linux supporter. In the past, they've released Playstation dev kits that are based on the Linux Operating System. (requisite Wikipedia link) I don't see any reason why they'd stop the program, especially if the professional devs were also finding the technology useful.

    2. Re:Cell by lovebyte · · Score: 3, Informative

      I guess the PS3 HDD with Linux was true...
      Not necessarily. AFAIK, IBM and friends have had Linux running on a cell for some time. And they plan on selling cell-based machines outside of the PS3. A quick google leads to this page : http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/librar y/pa-expert4/

      --

      I'll do it for cheesy poofs.

    3. Re:Cell by (H)elix1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm sure the fact that Sony gets to ship these PlayStations as 'computers' rather than game consoles if they pre-install Linux helps as well. They tried to do it with the PS2, but it was not close enough. With a HDD and Linux preloaded, I suspect it might be enough to get them past paying var in the UK. Tis OK to be a Linux supporter, if only to save cash, in my book.

    4. Re:Cell by Lussarn · · Score: 1

      Can anybody take a guess on how good cell is for video encoding, If it's fast I can buy a PS3 for video encoding alone.

    5. Re:Cell by grahamlee · · Score: 2, Funny
      Can anybody take a guess on how good cell is for video encoding
      Three and a bit.
    6. Re:Cell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All this slash-wank over the cell processor... it's got hardware DRM built right into its design. Sony is no more a supporter of Linux, and Free software, than is Microsoft.

    7. Re:Cell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

      Hah! You are clearly the biggest moron to have ever walked this earth! Your knowlege and abilities are so laughable you should simply crawl back under whichever rock you live beneath and stay there, never to darken these hallowed pages of Slashdot ever again. I question wether you have ever even seen a computer before, let alone what in the world leads you to believe that you are in any way qualified to talk authoritatively about the subject. Your grammar is also laughably poor; who but a simpleton would use a sentence fragment?

      Anyway, as any idiot knows, the correct answer is two and three quarters, give or take a smidgen.

    8. Re:Cell by leoxx · · Score: 1

      Actually, this is probably being used today by people who buy one of Mercury's Linux based Cell blades.

    9. Re:Cell by Andrew+Tanenbaum · · Score: 1

      You wouldn't hate DRM so much if it was being used to enforce the GPL.

  5. Bugs by SheeEttin · · Score: 1, Funny

    Well, I've been using it for a few minutes, but it seems that there are a few bugs, like whe8#@4!n;)NO CARRIER

    1. Re:Bugs by u16084 · · Score: 1

      I have the Same Prob
      NETWORK CABLE UNPLUGGED
      Oh Wait, Never Mind...

      --
      -- I Dont Deserve A Sig I Have Bad Karma
  6. cdrecord by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 1

    Slightly OT, but have Linux and Schilling decided to let cdrecord work right when acting as an IDE device yet? Last I checked, it's still been broken since 2.6.8.

    1. Re:cdrecord by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      As of last week, the endless cdrecord flamewar was still continuing.

    2. Re:cdrecord by keshet · · Score: 3, Informative

      Broken I guess in terms of "doing the right thing",
      but I have burned with cdrecord on 2.6.13 like this:

          $ cdrecord dev=ATA -scanbus
          $ cdrecord dev=ATA:1,0,0 ..

      see this discussion:

      http://community.livejournal.com/debian/186598.htm l

    3. Re:cdrecord by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      I love a good pissing contest...

    4. Re:cdrecord by gmack · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The problem is that Schilling wants linux to behave exactly like Solaris' incomprehensable s,b,l format even though Linux has to support more devices and refuses to even read patches that make things easier for Linux users. It's at the point that if cdrecord accidentally supports something that doesn't look like the solaris way Schilling will add code to disable it.

      Combine that with the fact that the DVD tools from Schilling are no longer open source and requires a License key The project has been forked.

      If your having trouble with cdrecord I'd suggest using the alternate version instead.

    5. Re:cdrecord by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 1
      Your link is basically a synopsis of the eternal flame war that's been going on since 2.6.8, lengthened by two asshats (Jorg and Linux) who are so set on their way being 'right' that they refuse to cooperate.

      It seems impossible to record to an IDE CD burner as non-root users, at least for me, without the ide-scsi crap.

    6. Re:cdrecord by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

      And this brings us to today's informal open source poll.

      Who's the bigger prick: Jorg Schilling, Larry McVoy, or David Dawes?

    7. Re:cdrecord by m50d · · Score: 2, Interesting
      The problem is that Schilling wants linux to behave exactly like Solaris' incomprehensable s,b,l format

      He wants something consistent, is all. Remember how towards the end of the 2.4 lifespan linux people were saying "ide-scsi is obsolete, move to the new ATAPI: method"? And then in a few months that was old and deprecated and it was all "move to the ATA: method"? And then it was changed around again around 2.6.9 for no discernible reason at all?

      It's at the point that if cdrecord accidentally supports something that doesn't look like the solaris way Schilling will add code to disable it.

      I haven't seen that. I have seen Linus adding code that looks to be there solely to break cdrecord.

      Combine that with the fact that the DVD tools from Schilling are no longer open source and requires a License key The project has been forked.

      It was forked before (dvdrtools), and will doubtless be forked again. The forks will die out once the maintainers realise that it's not Schilling being awkward, it's the kernel people. Last I knew, the fork you mention was depending on ide-scsi, which had a witch hunt against it towards the end of 2.4, was declared obsolete a few times as the latest poorly-thought-out replacement arose, and when this didn't get people to abandon it, was intentionally crippled around 2.6.9 or 2.6.10 time. Whoops. CD writing on linux is bloody hard - the only other project which has lasted any amount of time is cdrdao, and that uses Schilling's libscg for drive access. The sooner people stop their hero-worship of Linus, stop the persecution of Schilling, and start looking at the facts, the sooner something can be done.

      --
      I am trolling
    8. Re:cdrecord by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 4, Insightful
      He wants something consistent, is all. Remember how towards the end of the 2.4 lifespan linux people were saying "ide-scsi is obsolete, move to the new ATAPI: method"? And then in a few months that was old and deprecated and it was all "move to the ATA: method"? And then it was changed around again around 2.6.9 for no discernible reason at all?

      I'm reminded of an Emerson quote, "Foolish consistencies are the hobgoblin of small minds." In this case, Schilling wants something that 1) is consistently *bad*, and 2) in general makes life difficult for anyone *not* using a SCSI drive, which 3) is 90%+ of the population. An "elegant" solution that doesn't work isn't a solution.

      The sooner people stop their hero-worship of Linus, stop the persecution of Schilling, and start looking at the facts, the sooner something can be done.

      I think "persecution" is a tad much, and if there are any ill feelings Schilling has earned them.

    9. Re:cdrecord by clydemaxwell · · Score: 1

      Alls I do is cdrecord dev=/dev/hdc

      --
      Browsing with classic discussion, noscript, at -1 and nested
      no hidden comments and I only mod UP
    10. Re:cdrecord by ookaze · · Score: 1

      Slightly OT, but have Linux and Schilling decided to let cdrecord work right when acting as an IDE device yet? Last I checked, it's still been broken since 2.6.8

      No. I did not take side for Linux or Schilling before.
      My wife uses K3B, and I try to update kernel as soon as they are out lately on my desktop PC, because they have features that improve the desktop (and latest udev needs latest kernels). And when she comes telling me burning errors out, it's really irritating.
      When I saw that cdrdao works perfectly in K3B, I tried fixing cdrecord, believe me, I tried everything : it works with my LG burner, but refuse to work with my Plextor one, except on root.
      Last time I tried was the latest dev release of cdrecord. It didn't work, I gave up, wiped out cdrecord, and installed dvdrtools, with a symlink from cdrecord to dvdrecord. Now it works perfectly ...
      So now, I take side with Linus, because I lost my time trying to make cdrecord work, and realise that the dvdrtools fork works just fine on new linux kernels, despite being older than the latest cdrecord version.

    11. Re:cdrecord by m50d · · Score: 3, Insightful
      In this case, Schilling wants something that 1) is consistently *bad*, and 2) in general makes life difficult for anyone *not* using a SCSI drive, which 3) is 90%+ of the population. An "elegant" solution that doesn't work isn't a solution.

      It worked. Under 2.4.20 my cd burner worked flawlessly. In fact, it still doesn't perform as well as it did then (since I can't have cdrecord setuid root now, I have to burn a bit slower so I don't get buffer underruns). It was fine from the hardware perspective - any atapi drive worked, any scsi drive worked, the clunky 2x parallel port drive I was able to dig out worked. It was fine from the application's perspective - atapi drives support the scsi commandset, so all you had to do is send scsi commands, much like how you send ip packets and don't care what kind of networking hardware is underneath. The only people who didn't like it were kernel people who seemed to have some grudge against ide-scsi - though the only real criticism I've ever seen offered was that it was "ugly". The people going for an elegant solution that doesn't work are the kernel devs.

      --
      I am trolling
    12. Re:cdrecord by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Linus's name is Linus, not Linux.

    13. Re:cdrecord by cyclomedia · · Score: 1

      ok, IANA Linux Hacker but, cdrecord? if that does what i think the name suggests it does then, cdrecord? isnt this the kernel? sholdnt the kernel do stuff like: move the mouse pointer about and manage RAM?

      honestly, i'm not trolling, but isn't this bloat? or does it come in under IO

      --
      If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
    14. Re:cdrecord by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You haven't needed that awful ide-scsi for a long time. Give ide_cd a whirl.

    15. Re:cdrecord by CRCulver · · Score: 1

      It seems impossible to record to an IDE CD burner as non-root users, at least for me, without the ide-scsi crap.

      I burn CDs as a non-root user in Nautilus (with nautilus-cd-burner) all the time and I don't have ide-scsi enabled. Now, it could be that my distribution installs nautilus-cd-burner with root privs, but I didn't have to jump through any hoops.

    16. Re:cdrecord by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are :-P

    17. Re:cdrecord by dan+the+person · · Score: 1

      So updating the kernel broke your dvd recording software, and you conclude it must be the fault of the dvd software?

    18. Re:cdrecord by Ginger+Unicorn · · Score: 1

      hahaha he should change it to linux. That would be funny.

      --
      (1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
    19. Re:cdrecord by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you don't use the patched version of cdrecord your distro provides expect problems. btw this goes for any software.

    20. Re:cdrecord by Overly+Critical+Guy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It was forked before (dvdrtools), and will doubtless be forked again. The forks will die out once the maintainers realise that it's not Schilling being awkward, it's the kernel people. Last I knew, the fork you mention was depending on ide-scsi, which had a witch hunt against it towards the end of 2.4, was declared obsolete a few times as the latest poorly-thought-out replacement arose, and when this didn't get people to abandon it, was intentionally crippled around 2.6.9 or 2.6.10 time. Whoops. CD writing on linux is bloody hard - the only other project which has lasted any amount of time is cdrdao, and that uses Schilling's libscg for drive access. The sooner people stop their hero-worship of Linus, stop the persecution of Schilling, and start looking at the facts, the sooner something can be done.

      All this crap is why I stick with the BSDs. They actually act professional and make it a point to retain common sense and stability in their operating systems. I've watched Linux over the years become something like a spiraling rocket that looks a little out of control.

      --
      "Sufferin' succotash."
    21. Re:cdrecord by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      And on that subject, what's so inherently difficult about writing CD recording software? FreeBSD comes with an IDE burning tool, burncd, that has worked perfectly every time I've used it. Is it harder to do the same under Linux, or does cdrecord include some advanced, hard-to-implement functionality that burncd skipped?

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    22. Re:cdrecord by ISayWeOnlyToBePolite · · Score: 1

      All this insight derived from the seemingly mere fact that cdrecord worked with a kernel released in 2002.

    23. Re:cdrecord by inode_buddha · · Score: 1

      It comes under I/O because the kernel needs low-level SCSI drivers for it, and all hardware access goes through the kernel.

      --
      C|N>K
    24. Re:cdrecord by fimbulvetr · · Score: 1

      Not to drag OSs into this, but Ubuntu breezy & (mainly) dapper have worked with every kernel, k3b and gnomebaker version I've started using ubuntu (Last May-ish) with my Plextor drive.

      Something that may help, though I doubt it, check your plextor firmware. They release new versions often and some older version of the firmware are buggy and could play a role in your issues. There's a linux utility to update the firmware from the command line.

    25. Re:cdrecord by nb+caffeine · · Score: 1

      KDE comes with K3B, which has worked perfectly every time I use it. Its great, it tastes great, like Nero used to...

      --

      "Something's wrong with you...and I hope we never do meet again." - Deftones When Girls Telephone Boys
    26. Re:cdrecord by Your+Anus · · Score: 5, Informative

      As noted above, the cdrecord code has been forked. This forked version of the code is now called dvdrecord. They dropped Joerg's artificial bullshit errors about linux, enabled the dvd code, and fixed up the build to use standard tools.

      --

      In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.
    27. Re:cdrecord by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      makes life difficult for anyone *not* using a SCSI drive, which 3) is 90%+ of the population.

      That's what linux makes you believe, but actually, ATAPI is nothing but SCSI (-commands) over IDE. The same is true for CD or DVD-drives connectrd over USB, FireWire, FC/AL etc... I can't actually think of any current drives that do not look like SCSI to applications, if only the operating system provides a useful abstraction layer for the transport layer. Amazingly, even Windows gets this one (almost) right.

    28. Re:cdrecord by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 1, Informative
      KDE comes with K3B

      Yes, it does. K3b is an excellent frontend to cdrecord. Of course, you still have to have cdrecord properly installed and working in order to use it.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    29. Re:cdrecord by Triffid_Hunter · · Score: 1

      I've been using atapi packet cd/dvd writing ("acting as an IDE device") since 2.6.10 (when the kernel changelog mentions it being fixed) with no problems at all, even when burning "on the fly" at 6MB/sec (DVD 8x) across my network.

      You must be using debian (or at least their update policies) to have such an old kernel ;)

    30. Re:cdrecord by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      6 MB/sec is closer to DVD 4x.

    31. Re:cdrecord by ArsonSmith · · Score: 1

      Yea, dead is pretty stable.

      --
      Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
    32. Re:cdrecord by lgftsa · · Score: 2, Informative

      My K3B uses cdrdao or growisofs as required. No cdrecord here...

    33. Re:cdrecord by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 1

      I think his point is going back to the earlier posts that Schilling has been intentionally disabling any support in cdrecord except for the utterly horrific and user-unfriendly dev=x,y,z interface. i.e. he has intentionally broken it with respect to new kernels. The kernels have made progress, Schilling refuses to follow that progress. Before you start saying the kernel should have stuck with the old way of doing things for consistency - Do you think we should have stayed with ISA even though PCI was incompatible with many older peripherals? Do you think we should stay with CardBus in favor of moving to ExpressCard?

      1) dev=x,y,z is simply user unfriently, when everything else in the system refers to an IDE device with /dev/something
      2) dev=x,y,z prevents the use of udev for mapping devices to human-readable and sensible names like /dev/dvdrw
      3) Related to 2) - A particular device cannot be guaranteed to have a consistent dev=x,y,z mapping. Removable (Firewire or USB2) DVD-R or CD-R drives are the best example of this. My Pioneer DVR-105 in an external enclosure would start at 1,0,0, then move to 2,0,0, then 3,0,0 every time it was unplugged and replugged. Meanwhile, its /dev/dvdrw mapping stayed the same with every reconnect.

      --
      retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
    34. Re:cdrecord by m50d · · Score: 1

      I would love to run one of the BSDs but none of them support all the hardware on any of my systems. The big open kernel does seem to be good for getting drivers contributed. It's just a shame that it leads to so much silly politiking.

      --
      I am trolling
    35. Re:cdrecord by m50d · · Score: 1

      It's not from lack of trying on my part that it hasn't worked as well under any other.

      --
      I am trolling
    36. Re:cdrecord by dan+the+person · · Score: 1

      That's a silly argument.

      PCI is better than ISA. I'm all for progress.

      But when i put my first PCI card in, it didn't break my ISA network card.

    37. Re:cdrecord by r00t · · Score: 1

      Then, one day, you bought a motherboard that didn't support the old ISA crap.

      Linux doesn't support the old cdrecord crap. We're talking about a mis-designed interface that was added to Linux over a decade ago. For many years now, the interface has been considered mostly obsolete. It still works, somewhat, if you sacrifice a chicken and say a prayer. It's long past time for cdrecord to join us in the new century.

    38. Re:cdrecord by dan+the+person · · Score: 1

      A point release isn't the place to remove depricated features.

      From all accounts, until the kernel folks started messing with it, the old interface worked very consistently and reliably for most users, even if internally it was "ugly"

      PS. every PC motherboard i know of still has an ISA bus, even if it doesn't have an ISA slot. System management stuff often still hangs of the ISA bus.

    39. Re:cdrecord by richlv · · Score: 1

      hmm. i am burning cd's as non-root users for quite some time with k3b without ide-scsi.
      try running k3bsetup and following instructions/steps there. that should set some permissions required.

      --
      Rich
    40. Re:cdrecord by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 1

      System management stuff usually hangs off of an i2c or SMBus controller integrated into the motherboard chipset these days, not off the ISA bus.

      As to the issue of changes in a point release - I suggest reading other posts describing changes made to Linux version numbering during the 2.6 series (which accompanied changes in the entire Linux development and release process.)

      x.y.z versions can no longer be considered "point releases". That's why we now have an additional minor version number now (x.y.z.n). e.g. 2.6.15, 2.6.15.1, 2.6.15.2.

      In short, version numbers are meaningless. And in this case, imagine that presence of an ISA bus in the system could potentially cripple performance of the PCI bus. There's a good chance that retaining support for the old dev=x,y,z system was causing problems. In fact, I'm pretty sure it WAS because it was giving the people writing code for removable devices (USB and Firewire storage) massive headaches. Interestingly enough, I recall that the first kernel version where hotpluggable USB and Firewire storage devices worked reliably was one of the ones you mention as breaking the old dev=x,y,z system.

      --
      retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
    41. Re:cdrecord by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      windows shows it as being on ISA whether it really is is a different matter. If the stuff is on the motherboard and has a fixed address by convention is there really any point in exposing a pci/plug and play interface for it?

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    42. Re:cdrecord by bcmm · · Score: 1
      The forks will die out once the maintainers realise that it's not Schilling being awkward, it's the kernel people.

      Good reason for the forks not to die out: I cannot use cdrecord on my system. Cdrdao works fine. I have both installed, and can simply choose to use cdrdao instead of cdrecord in K3B. Why should I care about all this politics? And why do you think people like me will start to realise that they're wrong and somehow switch back to cdrecord?
      --
      # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
      Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
    43. Re:cdrecord by bcmm · · Score: 1

      And Linux isn't supporting my hardware if I can't use an ordinary CD-RW burner.

      (I'm playing devil's advocate here. In fact I happily use Linux and cdrdao and simply ignore cdrecord because it doesn't work. I'm just pointing out that his stated reason for using BSD is the same as your reason for using Linux).

      --
      # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
      Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
    44. Re:cdrecord by bcmm · · Score: 1

      Cdrecord isn't part of the kernel. It's a CD recording application. However, it obviously relies on the Kernel's support of the CD burning hardware. The issue that makes people angry is that the cdrecord people and the Linux people disagree over how Linux should handle CD burners. Both sides have accused each other of making their software break support for recent versions of the other. I personally believe the Linux developers, because cdrdao works find from version to versio n for me.

      Furthermore, I don't think you use Linux. I think you use Windows. The kernel doesn't "move the cursor around" any more than it "records CDs". The X server moves the cursor around (or GPM does if you don't use GUIs). The kernel just lets X know what the mouse does (i.e. provides drivers for the mouse hardware). Just because something still works in Windows when you've killed all the processes you can, doesn't mean all OSs think it's a good idea to put it in the kernel...

      --
      # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
      Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
    45. Re:cdrecord by m50d · · Score: 1

      It's never got to the point of complete unusability - though Schilling deserves all the credit for that. There's always been some way to use your cd burner. Wheras with BSD the drivers for my stuff simply don't exist. But you're right.

      --
      I am trolling
    46. Re:cdrecord by m50d · · Score: 1
      Good reason for the forks not to die out: I cannot use cdrecord on my system. Cdrdao works fine. I have both installed, and can simply choose to use cdrdao instead of cdrecord in K3B.

      I'm amazed, because they're both using the same library to access the devices - Schilling's library.

      Why should I care about all this politics? And why do you think people like me will start to realise that they're wrong and somehow switch back to cdrecord?

      You shouldn't and you won't. The developers will realise it is actually bloody hard to keep up with what's the kernel devs' favourite API this month, and give up their fork. Or you'll notice that cdrecord is working better than the fork and switch back.

      --
      I am trolling
    47. Re:cdrecord by bani · · Score: 1

      Schilling accuses everyone of stealing his code. He has accused Andy Polyakov of stealing cdrecord/dvdrecord code for use in growisofs, but he refuses to provide any evidence of the claimed stolen code. Sorta like SCO.

    48. Re:cdrecord by dan+the+person · · Score: 1

      yeah and how do you get to the i2c bus? many are still connected to the ISA bus.

      And to the other fella, this is using lm_sensors under linux, not windows.

  7. I'm mixed up here by Adult+film+producer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I thought the 2.6.x series of kernels was stable ? Shouldn't all of these new features being showing up in 2.7.... ?

    1. Re:I'm mixed up here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      About 2 years ago Linus switched the system.
      Previously, kernel x.y.z where y is even (like 2.6.anything) was stable, 2.3, 2.5, 2.7 would be development branch. Since 2.6, thing would be more incremental, and responsibility to stabilize kernels would be placed more on the distributors.
      Of course, there has been lot of discussion about this. See google.

    2. Re:I'm mixed up here by pebs · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I thought the 2.6.x series of kernels was stable ? Shouldn't all of these new features being showing up in 2.7.... ?

      They have changed things in favor of a faster development model. I believe now it is 2.6.X where when X is odd it is development (includes adding new features) and X is even it is release.

      --
      #!/
    3. Re:I'm mixed up here by 10Ghz · · Score: 4, Informative
      I believe now it is 2.6.X where when X is odd it is development (includes adding new features) and X is even it is release.


      No goddamit, NO! I find it really surprising that people STILL get this wrong! 2.6.15 is considered just as stable as 2.6.16 is. Hell, if you even bothered to read the summary of this discussion, you would see that they added several new features to this version!

      The closest thing to a "developement-version" is the -mm-tree, where new stuff is tried out before being added to the Linus-tree. Then we have the STABLE-trees (like 2.6.15.2).

      It used to be that odd-numbered kernels (2.x.y, where X is odd or even) were developement-kernel (like 2.3.0), while even-numbered kernels were stable ones (like 2.4.0). But that system is NOT used with the 2.6-series in any shape or form!
      --
      Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
    4. Re:I'm mixed up here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whoa! Easy there, code warrior! Some of us don't breathe kernel development for a living/hobby. Thank god he didn't say that Linux was a real-time OS.

      On a friendly note, you may want to read this when you have a second.

    5. Re:I'm mixed up here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Being ignorant of kernel development is fine. Being ignorant of kernel development, but trying to tell others complete bollocks as though you aren't ignorant is not fine.

      Your reply seems to indicate that you think he's mad at the person for not knowing enough, when in actual fact, it's more likely he's mad at the person for talking out of his arse.

    6. Re:I'm mixed up here by 10Ghz · · Score: 1

      When was 2.6.0 released? When did they implement the new developement-model? Ages ago. And there are STILL people who have totally wrong ideas as to how it works. Some people are STILL asking "aren't new features supposed to go to the 2.7-series?", even though the new developement-model has been explained and re-explained for something like 3000 times already, all around the net. No, you do not have to "live and breathe" kernel-developement. I most certainly do not. And even I know how the new system works.

      --
      Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
    7. Re:I'm mixed up here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No goddamit, NO! I find it really surprising that people STILL get this wrong! 2.6.15 is considered just as stable as 2.6.16 is.

      So is it the sum of all the numbers (2+16+15 = odd, 2+6+16=even) that is now used? I'm confused.

    8. Re:I'm mixed up here by dilvish_the_damned · · Score: 1

      I personally dont trust anything not ending in .0-pre9 .13 .18 or .34, .36 Now those are stable. Everything else is just a gamble. Word to the wise, definately stay away from the .7's, .9's, .10's, and especially the .23's, or you will be screwed. Those have messed me up every time since we moved into the 1.x.x(.xxx)+ series.

      Oh, and currently before you go and use "!" at people you might want to go check what is officially considered 'stable release'. I dont think four dots in the name is it.

      --
      I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
    9. Re:I'm mixed up here by m50d · · Score: 0, Troll

      Nope. The kernel no longer has a stable release. 2.6 is unstable despite the even number, 2.4 is deep maintenance don't touch it, and anyone wanting to release a distribution has to stabilise the kernel themselves, ruling out the hobbyists. I suppose linus' corporate masters are happy.

      --
      I am trolling
    10. Re:I'm mixed up here by Your+Anus · · Score: 2, Insightful
      While the 2.6.X has no meaning regarding stability, there is a "stable" release series, 2.6.X.Y, that runs in between each 2.6.X.

      Once a 2.6.X kernel is released, another team tracks patches for critical and security issues. It then releases patches on top of 2.6.X, starting with 2.6.X.1. The stable series for 2.6.X usually ends when 2.6.X+1 is released, although I hear that the stable team now tracks 2.6.X until 2.6.X+3 is released.

      For 2.6.16 in particular, one of the kernel developers says that he will track 2.6.16 for the long term once the stab;e team stops tracking it. Linus also mentioned that the 2.6.16 release is very similar to the patched-up kernels RedHat and SuSe ship right now, so it is a good base for distributions to build their own kernels.

      --

      In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.
    11. Re:I'm mixed up here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Compare it with the previous methodology. People adds tons of new features in the linux 2.5 tree (substitute linux 2.5 with the name from any other project). People doesn't care that much about stability because, well, it's the "development cycle" and things doesn't neccesarily need to be 100% polished.

      Then, you want to release the new version, and you find that you have 59372573523523 new features and that the whole tree is broken in many parts. Because you've a lot of new features it may take you many time to guess where bugs are, and you need to spend a whole year trying to stabilize the whole thing (just like it happened with the 2.5 development cycle)

      The new linux development cycle has new features, but they're only added when they are 100% polished and considered stable (ie, they've spent some releases in -mm and several people has looked at the code, the design etc). That doesn't means there're not bugs, but because there're not many new features (and people has stabilized things before merging them) the culprit is much easier to catch

      IOW: It encourages/forces people to write good code (IMO). Of course there're still bugs on it, but it's much easier to handle and fix than with previous development cycles. I guess that eventually people will set 2.6 as the "rock solid" development tree and 2.8 will be born with the previous methodology while the 2.6 tree stabilizes

    12. Re:I'm mixed up here by jesterpilot · · Score: 1

      There won't be a kernel 2.7 since it contains all the code stolen from SCO.

      --
      Trust me, I work for the government.
    13. Re:I'm mixed up here by Overly+Critical+Guy · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Yep, that's been thrown out the window. Now, any old line of kernels might have some bleeding edge hack thrown in or new replacement code that hasn't been well tested. You can no longer trust any line of kernels.

      --
      "Sufferin' succotash."
    14. Re:I'm mixed up here by anothy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      people get it wrong because the Linux community spent a really long time yelling very loudly that the old model was so simple to understand, and getting really frustrated when people got it wrong. they worked for years to get people to understand the old model (to the extent that people ever really did; x.y.z... which one's significant here again?). it shouldn't be surprising at all that people "still" get this wrong - after all, if there's still multiple trees under active development (2.4.33-pre2 hit a month ago tomorrow), shouldn't one expect to have some sort of standard rule for what goes where, or what to look for where? tracking changes to the linux development model isn't particularly high up on the list of most people's priorities, and, despite whatever you seem to think, such changes aren't, in anything resembling absolute terms, high-profile items. it's also not mentioned on the kernel.org front page, which is, i believe, still the official repository for kernel versions.

      or, more simply: yelling "we have these arbitrary rules we made up, that are totally different from our old arbitrary rules; why is everyone stuck on the old arbitrary rules we spent years yelling at them about?" over and over makes you look like a foolish git.

      --

      i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
    15. Re:I'm mixed up here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Oh I see. They're all equally unstable.

      Thanks for clearing that up.

    16. Re:I'm mixed up here by SpectreHiro · · Score: 1

      Some knowledgeable sapien should probably update the Wikipedia entry on Linux version numbering.

      --
      You can't win, Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
    17. Re:I'm mixed up here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "2.6.15 is considered just as stable as 2.6.16 is."

    18. Re:I'm mixed up here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The 2.6 series releases are considered stable. The old versioning with 2.x.y with if x is even it is stable and x is odd it is development, is not radically different from, and certainly doesn't contradict the current scheme. So it should not cause confusion. Yes, there is now a 2.6.y.z release aswell, but it doesn't change anything, it just allows small bug and security fixes in after the final release. If you do get confused just take a look at kernel.org it tells you which is the latest stable kernel.

      The new development model with new features going into the 2.6 series was decided upon because the 2.5 tree took too long to mature into 2.6 and ended up with lots of patches to backport features from 2.5 into 2.4 because the distros could not wait for 2.6. Since this isn't an ideal situation the current scheme with new feature going into 2.6 after they have been tested for a while in the -mm tree works better because you don't end up with a need for lots of backporting.

      As for the 2.4 series, that is also stable, but just in maintainance mode as far as I know. You can still get 2.2 and 2.0 kernels from the frontpage of kernel.org and they were both updated 2 years ago, which is long after active development on them stopped. Does that cause confusion?

  8. mknodat, etc. by Intron · · Score: 1

    I don't understand the need for all these new calls. Why not make chdir thread-safe? Is there any reason not to have a per-thread working directory?

    --
    Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
    1. Re:mknodat, etc. by cerelib · · Score: 0

      With these new system calls Linux software is going to have requirements like OS X software. Must have 10.3 or newer, sorry 10.2 folks it's time to upgrade. Now, "only works with Linux 2.6.16 or newer, time to recompile!" Every time I see requirements for OS X software I am glad that I don't have an Apple. Sure it's nice, but sometimes a little too bleeding edge, moving target, for me.

    2. Re:mknodat, etc. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think this phenomenon is best explained by the fact that Ulrich Drepper is a nut. Will somebody please shut this guy up?

      Personally, I don't think Linux should diverge any further from Posix than it already has. Poorly written Linux software (which is sometimes falsely claimed to be "Unix software" -- because people think that all the world is Linux) is already hard enough to port to other platforms, like BSD or Solaris.

    3. Re:mknodat, etc. by schon · · Score: 1

      Umm, no.

      These new syscalls will require nothing of the sort. The functionality is already present in glibc (which will use the kernel functions if they're present), and programs are already using them.

      They're being put into the kernel because that's where they belong.

    4. Re:mknodat, etc. by PitaBred · · Score: 1

      Just because POSIX is A standard doesn't mean it's a GOOD one. Linux adheres to it pretty well in many cases, but sometimes it just doesn't make sense. Linux has never been beholden to any standards, and that's one of it's main strengths.

  9. Slackware by hritcu · · Score: 1

    When will 2.6 be the default kernel for Slackware?

    --
    If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
    1. Re:Slackware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      when slackware 11 comes out

    2. Re:Slackware by Daxster · · Score: 3, Informative

      When Slackware 11.0 comes out, it'll use the 2.6 kernel as default. It looks like Pat is still keeping 2.4 support built in, so it's similar to what 10.2 is - built for 2.4, but contains full support for 2.6. Now it's built for 2.6 but still supports 2.4, in case your hardware really requires it.

      --
      Death by snoo-snoo!
    3. Re:Slackware by hritcu · · Score: 1

      Any information/speculation on when will Slackware 11 be released?

      --
      If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
    4. Re:Slackware by pixel+fairy · · Score: 1

      the 2.6 line has been kinda dev-ish with distros taking up
      alot of the work. 2.4 is still maintained and slackware has
      backported sets for newer hardware (acpi, sata, etc)

      if you want to run 2.6, you probably want to update your
      kernel anyway, the 2.6 packages (in testing) make this easy,
      including a good config to start with. the notes warn
      about the 2.4/2.6 header issuses, so use the slackbuild
      script in the glibc source package. and also, this time,
      use the alsa drivers in the kernel (theyll work with the
      provided userland, but its not like upgrading that is hard
      either. checkinstall (in extras) is your friend here)

    5. Re:Slackware by mkosmul · · Score: 1

      Once Gentoo finishes compiling.

    6. Re:Slackware by turgid · · Score: 1

      Ah, come on now, Ted.

      I've been using Slackware as my desktop OS since 1996. By 1997 I had enough confidence to compile my owm kernel.

      I've never used a default Slackware kernel since. Once I get the upgrade installed, I compile a brand new kernel.

      Ah, go on, go on, go on, go on,

      go on, go on, go on, go on.

      Go on!

      And you haven't lived until you've run slackware on a non-x86 architecture.

      It's got cocaine in it!

      Oh, I ment cinammon.

    7. Re:Slackware by quarkscat · · Score: 1

      You wouldn't be a troll, would you?

      There is very little to distinguish between a "default" kernel and a fully supported kernel.
      Slackware has fully supported the 2.6 kernel since release 9.1, fully 2 years ago. And if
      you prefer not to use the included 2.6 kernel, no problem -- I can download the very
      latest 2.6 kernel directly from kernel.org, compile it and drop it in. Far too many linux
      distributions use back-porting of kernel or library patches that break other applications.
      That, and artificial dependence upon the specific distribution's "special version" of the
      2.6 kernel turned me off from other linux distributions, and back to Slackware.

      Within a week of getting the 9.1 Slackware CD set, I had SCSI RAID-5 with XFS, SMB, and
      the latest 2.6 kernel all functional, and without any problems. Slackware does something
      that few other distributions do -- it honors the directory structure that the various F/OSS
      packages want, out of the box. I can go back to the original vendor for a new package,
      if I like, without waiting for distribution "X" to finally repackage it for me.

      That was Slackware 9.1, and Slackware only gets better and better. Why switch?

    8. Re:Slackware by higuita · · Score: 1

      probably in december, as the 10.3 is almost ready to be released and there are usually about 6-10 months between releases... but remember:

      - slackware is release when its ready, not sooner, not later.
      - you can already use 2.6, there are 2.6 kernel binaries in the CD, and you can always compile your own kernel

      --
      Higuita
    9. Re:Slackware by richlv · · Score: 1

      ahh. thanks. slackware development model is painfully closed, so i'm glad to learn that there will be at least one stable release with 2.4 and at least some vague approximate date for 2.6 march :)

      --
      Rich
  10. But, Will it? by beyonddeath · · Score: 0, Redundant

    But! Will it bring back the back light in my lcd that crapped out just 10 minutes ago?

  11. All I want from the kernel ... by Jizzbug · · Score: 1

    ... is PF_KEY reliability!

    My Linux-based VPN concentrators will thank you.

    --

    -=/\- Jizzbug -/\=-
    1. Re:All I want from the kernel ... by arivanov · · Score: 1

      If you are suffering from a case of the load going through the roof do the following:

      Flush your SAs with a setkey -F every time your loadavg exceeds a certain predefined value. 2 per CPU does this for me (I check it every 5 seconds).

      Essentially it is a combined racoon/setkey problem. When the SA expires some implementations (checkpoint is one) will start negotiating SAs as fast as they can manage. As a result your load will go though the roof and the SA table will grow until the machine chokes. If you detect this on time and flush them all SAs will be happily reestablished on the next packet and the machine will continue trucking along.

      --
      Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
      http://www.sigsegv.cx/
  12. hows about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    everyone get together and create 1 really good filesystem instead of 20 halfassed bugridden ones?

    1. Re:hows about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey at least there's choice in filesystems. I'd rather have a variety of choices rather than MS Windows' limited offerings.

    2. Re:hows about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You want Ext3 with dir_index and full or ordered journalling data mode. :-)

    3. Re:hows about by m50d · · Score: 3, Informative
      Have you ever tried to hack someone else's filesystem code? It's no fun. Most of them are small-team efforts, and the code is so low-level they have to be - anything else kills performance, so it's at the stage where you need to be deeply into the filesystem before you can do anything with it.

      I would go on about how reiser4's plugin system makes it much easier for people to contribute their own small parts to the filesystem and means we could have the best of everything if only the bloody kernel devs would accept it, but that's a rant for another day.

      --
      I am trolling
    4. Re:hows about by 0xABADC0DA · · Score: 1

      To me that smells like bs, that the fs has to be very low level or it kills performance. I think it's the other way around, that the filesystem being low-level is what kills performance. For example, if you are reading 50gb/sec you might expect at least 200 instructions to process each 4k page. But you aren't going to get that data rate unless the file is contiguous, in which case you could instead spend 20000 instructions finding a 400k page. So in other words the processor only has to keep up with the disk in situations where the disk is very slow (lots of seeking).

      Furthermore, when people talk about fs performance they invariably focus on immediate performance such as filesystem micro-benchmarks. They don't consider that a fs that is "slow" at creating and destroying 100 kernel trees could be the overall fastest because it is doing work to save time in the future. For example, I was using reiser4 fs and it was the slowest fs I've even used after using if for a long time under a lot of varied conditions (it would do io for 10+ second stretches just by saving a file in vi...). Microbenchmarks put it at the top though in throughput *and* cpu.

      It seems clear to me that the design of the fs is far more important than using lots of low-level code. I think the real problem is that *everything* in the linux kernel pretty much has to be low-level code, it's just that you notice it much more with complicated things like filesystems.

    5. Re:hows about by m50d · · Score: 1

      There's fuse around for doing a filesystem in higher level code if you like (yes, I know if linux was designed properly we wouldn't need kludgy stuff like fuse, but that's another issue), but every use of it I've seen has performed pretty poorly, and that's on "feel" as well as benchmarks.

      --
      I am trolling
    6. Re:hows about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm sorry that linux is complex and hard for you to understand.

      Maybe an OS with 1 really halfassed filesystem like Microsoft Windows would be more to your liking? I hear its 'plug n play' too, whatever that means.

      Unfortunately there are no servers for downloading windows, it looks as though they have stuck with the quaint old 'media only' form of distribution, which should rest well with people who find the internet bewildering and incomprehensible, like yourself!

      http://www.microsoft.com/

    7. Re:hows about by jZnat · · Score: 1

      Hans Reiser's Namesys already does that. Check out reiserfs for something tried and true, or check out reiser4 for a new outlook on filesystems and better performance.

      --
      'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
  13. Pardon my ignorance... by Rod+Beauvex · · Score: 1, Interesting

    But just what in the hell is a 'High Resolution Timer'?

    1. Re:Pardon my ignorance... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Informative

      But just what in the hell is a 'High Resolution Timer'?

      A "timer" is a software or hardware device that keeps track of how many time increments have passed. The "resolution" of the timer is how small the increments are. Thus a timer that tracks the number of milliseconds (1000 increments per second) wouldn't be of a particularly high resolution, a timer that tracks nanosecond increments (1,000,000 increments per second) would be.

      The purpose of high resolution timers is to provide better performance through more accurate digital timing. Take a serial port as an example. At 9600 baud, the timer it uses will "tick" about 9,600 times per second. The computers on each side align with these ticks to know that there's new data on the line. Assuming that the electronics can handle it in a stable fashion, the speed of that connection can be increased by changing the timer used for the port. On many serial ports, this speed can be over 100,000 baud, or 100,000 ticks per second.

      Modern USB ports can easily require timing in the nanosecond range to produce a high speed signal. Thus the need for high resolution timers capable of producing the necessary signal. Many other uses (such as video signal synchronization) exist.

    2. Re:Pardon my ignorance... by TEMM · · Score: 1

      Timers are used to keep time and generate interrupts at different intervals in an operating system. This allows the OS to run scheduling tasks at different times. The problem with this is that a timer needs to have a fine enough granularity to support the task it is given. For example, if you want to run the scheduler every second, then a timer that has a resolution of one second is fine. But if you want the timer to run twice every second, you need a timer with a finer resolution. As far as I know, the finest resolution you can get in an OS is equal to the Number of clock ticks per seconds, unless you have another hardware timer that is only responsible for generating a superfast clock.

    3. Re:Pardon my ignorance... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A timer that operates accurately over very short time periods (hundreds of nanoseconds or microseconds on a GHz processor) rather than tenths of a second.

      "High resolution" because it can resolve the difference between the timing of two events that happened at about the same time.

    4. Re:Pardon my ignorance... by Surt · · Score: 1

      It's a timer: thing that measures the passage of time (used for example in network, audio, video code among other things)
      With resolution: resolution means how accurate or precise the timer is capable of being (for example, can your timer measure seconds, or only minutes?)
      That is high: lots of resolution (in this case, the design allows for nanosecond accuracy, whereas the low resolution timers linux used to be stuck with were only millisecond accurate)

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    5. Re:Pardon my ignorance... by MyLongNickName · · Score: 1

      nanosecond increments (1,000,000 increments per second)

      Pedantic: this would be a microsecond. As far as I am aware this is a global definition. Although, I could be wrong ;)

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    6. Re:Pardon my ignorance... by Rod+Beauvex · · Score: 0

      Well, I now am informed. And a got a karma point. Yay.

    7. Re:Pardon my ignorance... by Surt · · Score: 5, Informative

      Bah, hit submit too soon on my previous reply:

      A high resolution timer is very useful when asking a question such as:

      How far apart (in time) were these two 10 Gbps ethernet packets?

      With the old, low resolution, timers, you got one of two answers typically: 0 ms or 1 ms. And when it said 1ms, it was actually probably closer to 0 ms, the clock just happened to roll over. The 'real' answer was probably 0.000000030 seconds, and that happened to be enough to make the clock trip into the next millisecond.

      With a higher resolution timer, the above scenario might tell you that those 2 packets were 30 nanosecs apart.

      This can be rather useful for assorted predictive algorithms, and pretty much any code that needs to measure the passage of time while operating in the greater than 1000 operations per second range.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    8. Re:Pardon my ignorance... by Emil+Brink · · Score: 1

      Correct, and a good explanation, except for a minor typo. A nanosecond is in fact 1E-9 seconds, meaning that a nanosecond-precision timer would (if perfect) increment 1,000,000,000 times a second. You confused nanoseconds with microseconds (1E-6).

      --
      main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
    9. Re:Pardon my ignorance... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Informative

      Whoops. I can't count today. (Hey, it's a monday. :-P)

      Nanosecond == 1E-9 == 1,000,000,000/sec
      Microsecond == 1E-6 == 1,000,000/sec

      Thanks for pointing that out. :)

    10. Re:Pardon my ignorance... by Tim+Locke · · Score: 1

      Serial ports do not have 'baud'. Perhaps you meant 9600 bps. 9600 bps modems operate at 2400 baud.

      --
      *** On the Internet, no one knows you're using a VIC-20
    11. Re:Pardon my ignorance... by Chirs · · Score: 3, Informative

      I believe you have confused "timer" with "timestamp". All you need for your example is a high resolution time *stamp*. The kernel has had usec accurate timestamps for ages now, and each architecture generally has a way to get better than that (although it's not generically available across the whole kernel).

      High resolutions timers are a different thing all together. They're what you would use if you had some code that you wanted to run 100usec from now, but you wanted to give up the cpu in the meantime.

    12. Re:Pardon my ignorance... by Surt · · Score: 1

      Sorry about that, you're completely right.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    13. Re:Pardon my ignorance... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 1

      I fear you're confused. "Baud" is the number of changes per second in a modulated signal, not the bits per second. Since we're discussing data changes per second on a serial line, the term "baud" is correct.

      I'd invite you to look up the origins of serial communications for a better understanding of what "baud" really is. Note that RS-232 was a direct descendent of Baudot's serial communications work.

    14. Re:Pardon my ignorance... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      since when is ignorance 'Interesting'?

    15. Re:Pardon my ignorance... by aristofanes · · Score: 1

      Damn near everything listed was beyond me ( a noobie web browser)
      One poster at OSNews said that if you look at the forums of different distros they all seem to have EXACTLY the same problems listed.( I agree)
      Perhaps the devs could focus on these?

  14. Linus' new philosophy of development in main tree by tayhimself · · Score: 5, Informative
    I must say that I am not happy with the 2.6.x kernel development. It has given me problems on both my server/desktop (dual P3-866 VIA board) and my laptop (toshiba portege p3 750). There are too many new features being added that seem to break others on working hardware. I would prefer if only hardware compatibility and bug fixes stayed in the main kernel tree while development continued in the 2.7.x tree like it used to previously.

    I would like to know other peoples experiences with upgrades on 2.6.x. BTW, I run the debian testing kernels and the hotplug to udev switch has given me problems as well.

  15. Two Months, and Two Weeks! by tyleroar · · Score: 3, Funny
    Linux 2.6.16 has been released after two months and two weeks of development.
    Goddamned I can't believe they made an entire kernel in two months and two weeks.
    --
    Portland, North Dakota Puppies
    1. Re:Two Months, and Two Weeks! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Remarkable isn't it? Others take six years to release a ui update! :)

    2. Re:Two Months, and Two Weeks! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is interesting to compare with the *BSD world. Most of the time, more features tend to be added in relatively minor Linux kernel releases than in numerous typical BSD releases. Linux moves *fast*. I'm undecided as to whether this is always good, or if the kernel advances are leaving the userland too far back in its wake ..

  16. Re:Caveat Emptor! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Devry? You mean Oracle still hires Americans?

    I thought like most large American corporations they only hired 10$ an hour Phds from Indian Institute of Technology and Shanghai University.

  17. Why do you bother? by amightywind · · Score: 1, Informative

    Give Gentoo a try. You can keep a stable kernel and experiment with a number of new ones. Slackware is hopelessly outdated.

    --
    an ill wind that blows no good
    1. Re:Why do you bother? by hritcu · · Score: 1

      Outdated or not, I really like Slackware, but I have to mention I never tried Gentoo, so yes I will give it a try one of these days. Thanks for the advice :)

      --
      If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
    2. Re:Why do you bother? by rehabdoll · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      wow, what a troll.

    3. Re:Why do you bother? by amightywind · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Don't mean to dis slackware. Gentoo allows you to keep your machine updated daily, quarterly, or never if you prefer. You will have very fine control over what you install. You can use spacific compiler options that apply to your flavor of CPU. The Gentoo forums are a great source of help. They are very active. A lot of people have suffered over the years to make things nice (if not easy). You should not have to suffer. Start here: http://www.gentoo.org/ Good luck!

      --
      an ill wind that blows no good
    4. Re:Why do you bother? by narfbot · · Score: 1

      You're wrong about Slackware. Don't generalize. It has had 2.6 support for two years now. 10.2 is fairly up to date in terms with all the typical distro releases, and if you want the latest there is slackware-current. Funny thing is, when I speak to my gentoo friend, I am always one or two versions a head of him with certain packages. But that is of course because I roll my own too, even the bleeding edge. You don't need gentoo ebuilds to do that.

    5. Re:Why do you bother? by smittyoneeach · · Score: 1

      For Gentoo, you have to be prepared to spend a non-zero amount of time fiddling with stuff.
      While 98% of ebuilds are good, I still have to put in a symlink in /lib from time to time, to pass the ".so what?" test.
      If you relish the little details, Gentoo might be the distro for you.
      Unless you have a compelling reason to change, there is no shame in Slackware.

      --
      Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
    6. Re:Why do you bother? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have either have never used slackware, or are just spreading lies. Please stop acting like you know what you're talking about, because you don't.

      The only 'outdated' part of slackware is the kernel -- everything in -current has all the latest software (and unlike in gentoo, everything works right). Slackware is perfectly ready for a custom 2.6 (or one from their website.) Speaking of outdated -- by how many months did Slackware beat gentoo to the punch with regard to NPTL...? Yeah, thought so. Troll in some other thread.

    7. Re:Why do you bother? by dbIII · · Score: 1
      Give Gentoo a try. You can keep a stable kernel and experiment with a number of new ones
      Give ANY linux distribution a try - you can keep a stable kernel and experiment with a number of new ones. In cases of older distributions like RHEL3 you may have to build the new kernel as a monolithic kernel (ie. no modules) if you want to run a 2.6.* kernel as well as a 2.4.* kernel.

      That said - I like gentoo and will be putting it on low power consumption machine this week to optimise all of the applications for VIA architecture and make it go faster than Fedora.

  18. Re:Linus' new philosophy of development in main tr by 10Ghz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well, you basically have two options:

    - Use the STABLE-tree (2.6.15.2 for example)
    - Use a vendor-kernel. Vendor-kernels are the ones that are considered stable these days.

    As for me.... I haven't had any issues with the kernels. But I use vendor-kernels mostly, not vanilla-kernels.

    --
    Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
  19. Thanks! by Godji · · Score: 2

    I'm just writing this to congratulate and thank the Linux developer community on yet another innovative release.

    That's all there is to my post - nothing interesting to say, just express my gratitude. Mod me down if you wish.

    1. Re:Thanks! by turgid · · Score: 1

      I'm just writing this to congratulate and thank the Linux developer community on yet another innovative release.

      This is only a minor point release, not an innovative release.

      Oh, you were joking? :-)

    2. Re:Thanks! by Godji · · Score: 1

      Well, it doesn't have to be minor to be innovative. I found the list of new features impressive despite not being to understand half of it.

      Besides, large releases are made up of many small releases, right? And we're not getting 2.7 or 2.8 anytime soon, so I might as well thank them now.

  20. Re:Caveat Emptor! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    >Devry? You mean Oracle still hires Americans?

    You think Americans can still get into DeVry?

  21. Linux 3.0 ? by digitaldc · · Score: 1

    What would an upgrade to the Linux Kernel have to do in order to be ordained 3.0?
    3.0 Looks better than 2.6.16.3.14159265eeee+ IMHO ;)

    --
    He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
    1. Re:Linux 3.0 ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      It will never. Linux 2.6 is considered as almort perfect.

      Soon there will rename it "Linux 16" instead of Linux 2.6.16, juste lie Emacs, cause there will never be a major version number upgrade anymore :)

    2. Re:Linux 3.0 ? by Spokehedz · · Score: 1

      What would an upgrade to the Linux Kernel have to do in order to be ordained 3.0?

      Make it to 2.9 and release a new stable version?

      Seriously--what differance does it make. We all just 'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade' (or yum upgrade) and get whatever the newest kernel version has been put into our repository gets loaded anyway. Right?

    3. Re:Linux 3.0 ? by ClamIAm · · Score: 1
      Make it to 2.9 and release a new stable version?

      Umm, 2.10?

  22. Re:Great! by MyLongNickName · · Score: 3, Funny

    You have linux installed on your toilet? And you need to upgrade it the minute a new release is available? You really are l33t!

    --
    See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
  23. History by PhYrE2k2 · · Score: 1
    Is there any reason not to have a per-thread working directory?


    Yes- becuase I guarentee you that every existing program that supports threads and makes use of chdir() calls it once and expects the program to function. Call it within a master thread and you expect it to affect all other threads.

    The way to do this is to introduce a new function that wraps it and does it only in the thread it was called in, but that's a pain.

    -M
    --

    when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
    1. Re:History by pclminion · · Score: 1
      The way to do this is to introduce a new function that wraps it and does it only in the thread it was called in, but that's a pain.

      No, the way it WOULD be implemented is as a new CLONE_ flag to clone(2) which would indicate that the child thread would not share the working directory with its parent. So in addition to CLONE_PID, CLONE_VM, CLONE_FILES etc we would have CLONE_CWD.

      It's not done, but if it was going to be done that's HOW it would be done.

    2. Re:History by Intron · · Score: 1

      Exactly. Then the existing functions could use the per-thread CWD so no new functions would be required. That would be backward compatible as well, since code that didn't use the flag could still fall back to the per-process CWD.

      --
      Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
  24. Reiser4 FS. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    When it will be included at vanilla? Any idea?

  25. Trolling, no, proselytizing, yes by amightywind · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Trolling? No, at least the original poster didn't think so. Proselytizing? Certainly. I am a Gentoo GNU/Linux fanboy and zealot. I am always trying to help new users to use their computers more wisely.

    --
    an ill wind that blows no good
    1. Re:Trolling, no, proselytizing, yes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      generally speaking, slackware afficionado's are not exactly ...new... users.

    2. Re:Trolling, no, proselytizing, yes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Heed not his blasphemous words brother amightywind. All heathen slackware users will be converted in the name... nevermind.

  26. Soft Cell by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1

    "support for the Cell processor"

    What do I need to do to recompile my P4 OS and apps to run on my PS3? Or some other Cell box that doesn't lie beyond the Magic Gate?

    --

    --
    make install -not war

    1. Re:Soft Cell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      check if any of your programs use any processor-specific code, rewrite it to fit the cell and recompile the apps with a compiler that knows cell (gcc should)

    2. Re:Soft Cell by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1

      Thanks for the generic advice.

      Any of "my" programs? Like all the packages I've installed and use every day?

      --

      --
      make install -not war

  27. Re:Obligatory remark... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "In any case, what's the harm, you can have multiple kernel present on your system."

    Just don't forget to compile any third party drivers for your gfx card like NVIDIA or ATI as an example. Sometimes you get lucky and there won't be new bugs introduced in during this process ...And don't forget to compile any wireless drivers you have if they aren't directly supported ...And then if you run something GNU like, lets say Fedora Core for conversational purposes, don't forget to compile in NTFS support if you dual boot and like to share data, etc.

    And then if all goes well that POS integrated audio card won't break and still works instead of breaking your hotplug USB support since sometimes it can work in 2.6.11, break in 2.6.14, work in 2.6.12, break in 2.6.16, work...well - you get the gist of it. That's the fun part of QA and testing a new system. Sure you get an extra 150 horsepower out of the engine but now to figure out why your tear the transmission up everytime you take off.

    Well on second thought, if you don't need the upgrade to achieve something like a fix to a broken ioctl routine running at twice the frequency on a 64bit system screwing up your time, maybe you shouldn't run the latest greatest kernel "just because" unless you have a real need...That is if your time is better spent rather than compiling modules for a footeen different kernel versions.

  28. NVIDIA drivers broken in 2.6.16 by JimBowen · · Score: 5, Informative

    In order to install them you must use a patch here, or they won't work.

    ~ Jim

    1. Re:NVIDIA drivers broken in 2.6.16 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
      Yeah, Fedora 5 ships today with a 2.6.15 kernel. Problem is some jackass Fedora guy broke it just before they shipped. He applied a patch that breaks tainted kernels and never tested it. Well, he says it went through the automated testing process. Last time I checked (and I am a software guy) you are supposed to test the exact funtionality that you changed - i.e. if your new kernel can't print a message that it's tainted, you need to try tainting your kernel and see that it doesn't print that message (instead of crashing say). Just throwing it over to an automated test is like saying "hey, it compiled - ship it". You patched XYZ - test XYZ explicitly - simple as that.

      Now why Fedora felt this non-standard patch was needed is probably a very interesting story. Anyway, they say fresh installs will need a "yum update" to fix it. Well now in a few days that will probably get us an update to 2.6.16 which might be broken as well as you say. :-( Unless of course they decide to pay attention to WTF they're doing.

    2. Re:NVIDIA drivers broken in 2.6.16 by justsomebody · · Score: 1

      Well now in a few days that will probably get us an update to 2.6.16 which might be broken as well as you say.

      1. There already is a patch
      2. Livna rpms will have this patch applied as soon as kernel 2.6.16 gets out for FC

      --
      Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
    3. Re:NVIDIA drivers broken in 2.6.16 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You must ask yourself--Why do you need a patch to get something to work with a new kernel? Fast patch, but why was it necessary in the first place? And we want everyone on Windows to switch to Linux...

    4. Re:NVIDIA drivers broken in 2.6.16 by justsomebody · · Score: 1

      You must ask yourself--Why do you need a patch to get something to work with a new kernel?

      Bugs exist, and now you have a proof. Bugs are the common thing in bleeding edge.

      Fast patch, but why was it necessary in the first place? And we want everyone on Windows to switch to Linux...

      There are two things in this case, one is using bleeding edge distro and one is using stable distro like RHEL. If one expects to have everything shiny and new, he can expect bugs. If one expects stability and just works, bleeding edge is not for him.

      p.s. What a lame case of trolling!

      --
      Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
  29. SiS USB by Solder+Fumes · · Score: 1

    Looks like a lot of general updates to the EHCI and USB BIOS interfacing, doesn't specifically mention SiS USB chipsets but I'll have to try this kernel in the hopes that my laptop USB ports will finally work, having been useless since kernel 2.4 and all bug reports falling on deaf ears.

  30. Secure file permissions :) by zlamma · · Score: 1

    Are the kernel source files permissions part of a new security policy? rwxrwxrwx!

  31. Re:Obligatory remark... by frodo+from+middle+ea · · Score: 1
    Just don't forget to compile any third party drivers for your gfx card like NVIDIA or ATI as an example. Sometimes you get lucky and there won't be new bugs introduced in during this process ...And don't forget to compile any wireless drivers you have if they aren't directly supported

    Yes this is indeed an issue, but if I am not wrong, 2.6 kernel can be compiled with support to load modules compiled with pervious 2.6 kernel, though I haven't really tested this out.

    .And then if you run something GNU like, lets say Fedora Core for conversational purposes, don't forget to compile in NTFS support if you dual boot and like to share data, etc.

    For any one who is insane enough to compile their own kernel, the least you can do is copy the config file from the previous kernel and do make oldconfig.

    It never ceases to amaze me just how well "make oldconfig" works.

    And then if all goes well that POS integrated audio card won't break and still works instead of breaking your hotplug USB support since sometimes it can work in 2.6.11, break in 2.6.14, work in 2.6.12, break in 2.6.16, work...well - you get the gist of it.

    I personally have never had USB hotplug problems, for sometime now, but then again I am not a QA person, so my tests are rather limited.

    And once again, if stuff doesn't work, nothing is broken, just boot back in the old kernel . And of course it would be silly to try this on anysort of production machine.

    --
    for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
  32. Re:Linus' new philosophy of development in main tr by m50d · · Score: 1, Troll

    My experience is exactly the same. 2.6 sucks, quite frankly, and doesn't deserve the even version number. It should have remained 2.5 until it was stable, which it certainly isn't at the moment.

    --
    I am trolling
  33. Moving physical memory pages on NUMA systems? by ngunton · · Score: 1

    I have a dual Opteron 265 (dual core) server running AMD64, which, so I understand, uses the NUMA architecture. I am no expert, but I understand that my 4GB RAM is split between the two processors on this architecture, at 2 GB each. Thus I have always wondered how exactly the OS can move tasks efficiently between processors if the memory for each task is so tied to a particular memory bank. For example, if you happen to have some tasks that are on one of the CPUs and they all suddenly start taking up more processor and more memory, was it possible previously for the kernel to move some of the tasks over to the other CPU, given the two separate memory banks?

    Is this what the new kernel is addressing, or am I way out here? Anybody who knows about this stuff? Thanks in advance.

    1. Re:Moving physical memory pages on NUMA systems? by ngunton · · Score: 0, Redundant

      Hmmm, maybe I should RTFA occasionally...

    2. Re:Moving physical memory pages on NUMA systems? by r00t · · Score: 1

      You mean 2 chips with 2 cores each (total 4 cores), or 1 chip with 2 cores?

      It's only NUMA if you have 2 chips and you populated RAM next to both of them. It's a mild sort of NUMA though, without a huge penalty for being dumb about things.

    3. Re:Moving physical memory pages on NUMA systems? by ngunton · · Score: 1

      I mean 2 x 265, i.e. two dual core CPUs.

  34. Re:Linus' new philosophy of development in main tr by aussersterne · · Score: 1, Troll

    Agreed, stability has suffered. I have regular OOPSen at this point, something I've NEVER had in Linux before. No, it's not memory or hardware failures. They're bugs.

    For example, I can reproduce an OOPS immediately on my laptop with Orinoco-based wireless simply by using EHCI (USB2) at the same time. Either one alone = great, no problem. Start a download and copy a file over USB2 = immediate OOPS (within fifteen seconds, guaranteed), and the system must be rebooted before Orinoco will work properly again.

    I spent half an hour trying to post to the development lists for these projects but thanks to our SPAM-enabled world, I never got past "we only allow posts from list subscribers." I couldn't get their subscription confirmers to reach me and thus I couldn't post to them.

    The solution has been what? "Always bring the network down if I need to access my external USB2 devices, then bring then network back up when I'm done." That is a crapass solution for what is supposed to be an industry stability leader.

    Other OOPSen include the Linux video subsystem (I used to do video editing in Linux, but I'm giving up on that for a while) and something to do with framebuffer drivers that I don't have a good sense for yet but that has happened several times on a machine that was rock solid in the 2.4 days.

    Linux is unfortunately becoming more like Windows: a user-friendly desktop that "just works" -- when you can get it to work. I preferred the old model: it needs to be configured for six hours using sixty shell scripts and config files, but once you're done, it won't need to be rebooted for six years while you do your work.

    --
    STOP . AMERICA . NOW
  35. ATI installer by phorm · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I have a laptop with an ATI mobility (X600) chipset. I've consistently had issues compiling the ATI-provided drivers in various 2.6.x kernels, but I've heard from many that it should compile cleanly under 2.6.16. I'll try to update this post when I know more, as the kernel is currently compiling as I write, and the driver will soon (hopefully) follow.

    1. Re:ATI installer by Svenne · · Score: 1

      Eh, no. The build will die a horrible death. Try 2.6.15 instead.

      --

      Slagborr
  36. So where.. by mw22 · · Score: 0

    can I download this Linux? I hope it doesn't contain any spyware.

  37. SATA NCQ by Flammon · · Score: 1

    I can't wait for NCQ support. Hopefully 2.6.17.

  38. Re:Great! by squallbsr · · Score: 2, Funny

    NetBSD has had Toilet support for the past 4 years! Nothing new here, move along...

    --
    Sleep: A completely inadequate substitution for Caffeine.
  39. clustering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe you didn't realize it, but this is a "clustering" filesystem. If I'm not wrong, it's the first clustering filesystem that hits linux's main tree. Tell me where are the other 20 clustering filesystems?

  40. What defines "really good" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's simple to say "create a really good filesystem", but what is really good ? Some applications require speed, other need reliability, other needs a mix of both, etc... All filesystems have their pros and cons.

    It's like saying : Stop making new distributions and create one really good instead...

  41. More syscalls by DrSkwid · · Score: 3, Funny

    Great, that's just what Linux was lacking.

    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
    1. Re:More syscalls by jd · · Score: 1

      There's now a syscall for "more"?

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    2. Re:More syscalls by DrSkwid · · Score: 1

      Won't be long before they put the whole of GNU into the kernel and make it GNU/Linux once and for all.

      --
      There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
    3. Re:More syscalls by ClamIAm · · Score: 1

      When they implement emacs(), I'm definitely jumping ship to one of the BSDs.

  42. argh! by nephridium · · Score: 1
    Can't... fit.. into.. mind.. Sony DRM.. Linux free software.. Sony Rootkit... Linux Opensource... Sony big fat corporation.. Linux community of nerds and cyberpunks... my head.. ahhh the pain.... *splat*

    (Janitor) "Ah, not again! I hate wiping brains off the monitors.. someone block this slashdot site!"

    --


    And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
  43. Re:hows about...FIXING it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    if only the bloody kernel devs would accept it

    The kernel devs actually accept it, as long as the bloody reiser devs fixes the obvious defiencies the code has. It has been more than one? two? years since reiser 4 "was ready to be merged" according to hans reiser and the haven't even tried to submit it in the 2.6.16 time frame - a sign that there is not a lot of work to do, for sure (they last time reiser tried it people pointed out him a list of things that haven't been fixed - yeah, reiser sure "was ready to be merged").

    Maybe we should accept low-quality code in linux just because it's...reiser and it's c00l? Hey, that's the Microsoft Way, and it works for them! Apparently some people thinks that just because reiser 4 has plugins and plugins sound cool it mean it has zero bugs and all the design mistakes are magically fixed by some sort of magic.

      Are you aware that lots of "cool features" were rejected in the past in linux?. Being able to use 1 GB of memory, 64-bit processors, SMP, rmap-based memory management: Those features that sound "natural" today were rejected by Linus because the implementation was HORRIBLE and they weren't merged until someone implemented them in a cleaner way. Why reiser should be different? Linux developers are not going to allow people to fuck up everything because something is "great". It has taken a lot of hard work to take linux where it's now and make it work in 512-cpu SGI beasts, lowering the bar is not going to make linux any better.

  44. New philosophies == new horizons by CarpetShark · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I agree, it's less stable. However, you're free to use your distro's more stable tested and patched kernels (assuming your distro maintains its packages like Debian does). Unless you're deliberately running the latest and greatest GNU/Linux desktop, or trialling new hardware setups, then you should certainly be doing that.

    What the new 2.6 development model gets us though, is much faster turnaround between kernel developers and kernel users. I think in the end, this will give us more features and a generally better kernel, without too much sacrifice.

    Sadly, I think DRM is coming to Linux soon, so I'll probably have to jump ship to Debian GNU/Hurd or Debian GNU/kFreeBSD before Linux efforts bear much (non-DRM) fruit.

    1. Re:New philosophies == new horizons by Omicron32 · · Score: 1

      Er... When you configure your kernel, leave the checkbox for DRM unticked?

      What's so hard about that, that you'd rather be willing to jump ship?

    2. Re:New philosophies == new horizons by CarpetShark · · Score: 1

      Because, the default will become the standard, and soon, software will require it. That would be fine, of course -- I could just use it until it invaded my life or my rights too much, then switch. However, I also contribute to the GNU/Linux community in various ways, and I won't continue to lend my voice to something that's going down a road towards DRM, however slowly its getting there. If Linux goes DRM, I'll go elsewhere, and develop for and support that instead.

    3. Re:New philosophies == new horizons by dylan_- · · Score: 1

      Something doesn't make sense here. If Debian GNU/Hurd doesn't include any software that requires DRM, then what makes you think Debian GNU/Linux will? IOW, if you want to avoid running software that requires DRM then why don't you...erm...just not run any software that requires DRM? (I mean, change kernels if you really want to, but I don't get the reasoning here...)

      --
      Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
    4. Re:New philosophies == new horizons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      whats up with the timecube link? are you seriously proposing the content?

    5. Re:New philosophies == new horizons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You were educated stupid.

    6. Re:New philosophies == new horizons by Xtifr · · Score: 1

      I suspect that grandparent is one of the people who is convinced that TCPA == DRM. The fact is that Linux already has TCPA support (and, yes, you can just leave the checkbox unticked if it really bothers you). It's used for security, not DRM. TCPA is really just public-key encryption on a chip. Yes, that obviously could be used for DRM, but IBM (who contributed the TCPA support to Linux) has already published some whitepapers which, among other things, point out just how ineffective that would be and strongly hinting at some attack vectors--if you have access to the machine. (I can think of some more attack vectors, but they rely on having full control of the OS--fortunately, I do, thanks to IBM and Linus.)

      Anyway, a bunch of the "TCPA is evil, it has no other purpose than DRM" crowd are running around shouting about how Linux is obviously about to require DRM--how else can they explain the TCPA support already there? Of course, the idea that switching to BSD will make you safe is quite silly--not only could TCPA support be added to BSD, but there's no guarantee that you'd get the source if that did happen! (Not that I have anything against BSD; I use it on a regular basis, and I'm a big fan, even though I generally prefer GNU userspace.)

    7. Re:New philosophies == new horizons by CarpetShark · · Score: 1

      That's a good point. I guess the same thing applies though, except it would be buffered a little by Debian's mostly-ethical stance: if Linux goes DRM, and it becomes a standard thing that applications use, then people will start asking why it's not in Debian, and eventually it'll work its way into the non-free section, and then maybe ubuntu will take it up in the main distro or something, and people will compare ubuntu to debian and say that certain apps can't run etc. And that's assuming that Debian is going to take a stand against DRM; which I don't know they will. Slippery road, like I said. If you have heard anything on Debian's official DRM stance, I'd be interested to hear about it.

    8. Re:New philosophies == new horizons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Every single application I use on Linux is open source. Now, WHY THE FUCK would an open source app require DRM?

      I don't think many people would care that DRM enabled kernels were not the default with most distros, I certainly wouldn't. Yes, there could be some, but not many.

      Now if drivers started requiring it I might get worried and it would be more of an issue, there are a lot more Linux users out there that wouldn't want to go without their proprietary drivers (particularly graphics cards). I would try to avoid it, but it will be an issue for those who want that particular hardware either because they don't want to spend money to replace it, or because the DRM free alternatives just aren't good enough.

    9. Re:New philosophies == new horizons by CarpetShark · · Score: 1

      Catch up with KPDF developments some time; you might find it interesting.

  45. Re:Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    upgrading my toilets kernel has always been a crap shoot.

  46. Debian testing by metamatic · · Score: 1

    I haven't had any problems with Debian testing kernels, other than the fact that the most recent is still 2.6.8.

    If you want to talk about problems in Debian testing, look at X.org (6.9 freezes many radeons) and PAM (tally still broken).

    --
    GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
    1. Re:Debian testing by laptop006 · · Score: 1

      Um no.

      I'm running 2.6.15 in testing, and have been for many weeks (straight from the main repositories). Also as Xorg 6.9 and 7.0 are the same code there should be no difference there, so what you're saying is you want an *older* xorg.

      But yes pam is broken, but that's not just a debian issue, there are some major limitations in pam that make it impossible to do some things that seem simple.

      --
      /* FUCK - The F-word is here so that you can grep for it */
    2. Re:Debian testing by metamatic · · Score: 1

      Oh, now that you've prompted me to check more exhaustively I see what happened.

      Someone had the bright idea of replacing kernel-image with something named linux-image, and not marking kernel-image-2.6.8-11 as transitional. They just casually mention in the linux-image description that it replaces kernel-image.

      Apparently having all the kernel-related packages with 'kernel' in the name was too convenient.

      --
      GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
  47. Re:Linus' new philosophy of development in main tr by GenKreton · · Score: 2, Informative

    You are using an unstable release of the kernel. Linus had made sevral lenghty posts addressing this and has made it abundantly clear that 2.6 is not stable and it will be under development.

  48. Re:Linus' new philosophy of development in main tr by tayhimself · · Score: 1

    I was not aware of this. I simply assumed that 2.6 was the current stable release. Considering it spawned from 2.5 and it has been out for a couple of years now. *shrug*. I am getting conflicting information in this thread. Some people say 2.6.15-2 is stable.It has some hardware bugs for me that did not exist in 2.6.4 through 2.6.7. Since 2.6.8 various parts have gone between the working and non working states (usb, orinoco, framebuffer). As you see upthread I am not the only person to have experienced these.

  49. Re:Linus' new philosophy of development in main tr by PitaBred · · Score: 2, Informative

    Quick and dirty: the kernel.org kernels aren't "stable" like you're wanting. Get a kernel from your distro if you want a stable kernel. If you want bleeding edge stuff (they call it bleeding edge for a reason), then be prepared for those kinds of problems.

  50. Re:Linus' new philosophy of development in main tr by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've usually found Linux kernels to be stable around X.X.20, hence my critical machines are all still on 2.4 kernels. There's nothing really new here - just apparently an admission that the even numbered versions really haven't ever been stable enough to justify keeping an unstable version around at the same time.

  51. Re:Linus' new philosophy of development in main tr by archen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'd say I'm an open source advocate, but the Linux kernel hasn't made me very happy with the quality of Linux. When someone says "So is Linux more stable than windows?" I have to answer with they're about the same.

    In my opinion its coming down to version-o-phobia. Everyone is so scared to incrament a version number that they pushed the problem farther down the number set. I've become really impressed with the quality of FreeBSD releases, which dropped the ball initally in the beginning of 5x, and now have gotten into a more steady release schedule - that also means increasing version numbers. On Linux we arbitrarily screw with the current version and dump the problem of stablizing them on the distros. What in the hell sort of solution is that? Linux needs to get back to developing far away from the stable tree. Linux needs to start with a real testing/release cycle on a regular basis. You don't need to break compatability when you increase version numbers. As Linux has developed into a stable non-hobbiest OS, it needs to step up to the plate and stablize itself. Using the stable version (2.6.x.x.x) or whatever isn't really fooling anyone. No distro is going to maintain ALL kernel versions, sooner or later you have to bite the bullet and upgrade and accept all the new garbage that has introduced bugs in THIS version of the kernel.

    And it's sort of funny that everyone shuns the BSDs because they are some sort of "leet" club, yet the reason for the messed up situation is because the finall word must always come from Linus. And this time Linus is wrong. Get the hell out of the stable branch!

  52. Dapper by escay · · Score: 1

    should they delay ubuntu 6.04 (dapper) a couple of weeks more and try to squeeze in the 2.6.16? last i know dapper rides on 2.6.15.8 so it would probably be worth it if they stretched the release date a little bit more to bring out an Ubuntu on par with the coming SuSe and Red Hat releases (which are going to have 2.6.16).

    1. Re:Dapper by Xtifr · · Score: 1

      > should they delay ubuntu 6.04 (dapper) a couple of weeks more and try to squeeze in the 2.6.16?

      No, absolutely not. The 2.6.15 branch is already reasonably stable and well-tested; the 2.6.16 branch is brand new and needs far more testing before it should be adopted and released by vendors. Remember, the kernel.org team no longer even pretends to make stable kernels--they say that job should be left to the vendors. Which means that Ubuntu (and other vendors) have some work ahead of them before they can even think about mainlining this kernel.

  53. Re:Linus' new philosophy of development in main tr by tayhimself · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Agreed. I had a hunch that I wasnt alone with these problems. People upthread and you have described exactly the problems I have with various versions of 2.6 breaking different things. 2.2 and 2.4 kernel releases didnt scare me but 2.6 ones do.

  54. 2.6.16 by phorm · · Score: 1

    I was actually trying previously with 2.6.15, which has missing links in regards to ATI_AGP (and thus causes crashes etc when the main ATI driver loads on top of the normal AGP driver).

    Perhaps others have had some luck, but I haven't had any success with 2.6.16 either..

    1. Re:2.6.16 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I believe you need to use the AGP driver for your motherboard eg. intel-agp, not the ATI one.

  55. MODS ARE CRAZY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sheesh, how is the parent a troll? Ye gods and little fishes. It's on topic. It presents useful information about recent kernel releases. Mods are smoking crack again!

    1. Re:MODS ARE CRAZY by rojer_31 · · Score: 1

      Agreed.

  56. Udev still has major problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    We are already at udev 087 (unusable on anything below linux 2.6.15) !!

    It's also unusable on anything 2.6.15+. One example is that it won't properly load the sbp2 module when an ieee1394 hard drive is connected. The "ancient" versions of udev that aren't certified to work on these newer kernels, do.

    Any chance that the udev gods might someday do some bug fixing instead of rewriting udev over and over, and bloating it full of features nobody wanted? Why not keep hotplug seperate (or at least allow to invoke udev in a "populate /dev" mode and then later in a "probe for hardware" mode)? The way it is now prevents populating /dev prior to checking the root partition because udev will start firing off scripts that require write access before the partition is read/write (like starting the DHCP client daemon, for example).

    Udev is certainly a success, though. It has succeeded in being more invasive and buggy than devfs could ever have dreamed of.

  57. Re:Linux is dying by tricore · · Score: 1

    First of all WTF? second of all, even if you were right... who cares? I run Linux because it doesn't suck quite as much as everything else that actually supports my hardware (I'm currently toying with FreeBSD, but you have to admit that the hardware support moves a bit slower). I don't give a crap if major corporations like it, that's not my goal, why should we care? I just want something good, that I can modify and customize if necicary, and is policed by a large populatin of zealots so it's usable, free and stays that way. If people are too stupid to use it, that's their problem.

  58. Re:Linus' new philosophy of development in main tr by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Get a kernel from your distro if you want a stable kernel.


    What kind of crap is that? That's like a company putting out defective cars and expecting the dealers to figure out how to fix them.

  59. Re:Linus' new philosophy of development in main tr by turgid · · Score: 1

    People predicted that this would happen when they announced the new 2.6.x development policy a long time ago, and lo it has come to pass.

  60. Whither OCFS2 ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Glad that ocfs2 finally made it into the official Kernel.

    Now if Oracle would only certify ocfs2 for use by Oracle databases!

    According to Oracle's own OCFS2 doc:. OCFS2 certification with Oracle 10g Release 2 RAC on Linux x86, x86-64, Itanium and Power is currently in progress.

    Kindof makes you wonder.

    1. Re:Whither OCFS2 ? by otisg · · Score: 1

      How is OCFS2 comapred to, say, Redhat's GFS? ( http://www.redhat.com/software/rha/gfs/ )

      Thanks.

      --
      Simpy
    2. Re:Whither OCFS2 ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      GFS is not the only CFS in town for Oracle RAC. Have you heard of MatrixServer? They've had an ODM api and true CFS for RAC for years now. They've also have gone through the new Linux RAC certification test, something GFS cannot claim.

      http://www.polyserve.com/pdf/10gRAC_MxS_Whitepaper .pdf

  61. Cell Simulator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It takes quite a lot of porting effort to make an application fast on Cell, not just recompiling it. See http://www.bsc.es/projects/deepcomputing/linuxonce ll/ for info on a simulator and binaries you need to get started.

    If you just want to run generic code, use Fedora Core 5 for powerpc, which incidentally was also released today and happens to run on the same machines that the kernel currently supports.

  62. Slackware limitations by amightywind · · Score: 0

    The only 'outdated' part of slackware is the kernel -- everything in -current has all the latest software (and unlike in gentoo, everything works right).

    ...and Gnome and udev and millions of others I don't have time to list.

    Slackware is perfectly ready for a custom 2.6 (or one from their website.)

    Which one? 2.6.0? Are you sure you want to compile from scratch? Wouldn't you like to leave it to someone more knowledgable, like your slackware masters? It will be more user friendly that way.

    Speaking of outdated -- by how many months did Slackware beat gentoo to the punch with regard to NPTL...? Yeah, thought so. Troll in some other thread.

    I would not waste my time. The NPTL stubs have been in glibc for a while. Since it was just released in the kernel nobody has extensive experience them, including you. Red Hat forks don't count. I often wait for software to be released in some fashion before I use it. Given the glacial Slackware release process (isn't it one guy?) I would think you would have learned more patience.

    --
    an ill wind that blows no good
    1. Re:Slackware limitations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hello again, same AC here. I cannot believe the mods gave you points, since you have no idea what you're talking about and have never used slackware...

      Gnome was dropped from the distro. Period. Not enough slack users wanted it anyway (or it would have stayed). If you want it, use dropline, or the other slack-based distros that bundle gnome. And udev; udev has been in slackware since 10.0, what are you talking about?

      About the kernel: once more it is clear that you've never actually ran this distro. I'm running slack current, 2.6.15. Patrick makes his own 2.6 kernels, they are there for people who need them in /testing. I dont need his help, so I compile my own. AGAIN -- USE SLACKWARE before sounding ignorant.

      I would not waste my time. The NPTL stubs have been in glibc for a while. Since it was just released in the kernel nobody has extensive experience them, including you. Red Hat forks don't count. I often wait for software to be released in some fashion before I use it. Given the glacial Slackware release process (isn't it one guy?) I would think you would have learned more patience.

      Oh, this is just too good. Apparently the mods will put anyone up that SOUNDS like they're intelligent. The fact is that NPTL has been in glibc since 2.3.3 was released I-don't-know-how long ago, and the kernel has been making use of them since long before 2.6.12. -lpthread anyone? THat gcc switch wasn't just added when 2.6.16 was released! And what do you mean by Red Hat "forks"? What? Red Hat maintains glibc, and all Linux distros use glibc. And dont even go there with "wait for software to be "released"..." it was more than a year after gcc-3.4 was released before gentoo FINALLY adopted it, even although it was stable long, long before then.

      Just stop, okay? I'm sorry if I'm coming off as a belligerent angry asshole, but I do tend to get riled up when people start talking from bodily orifices other than their mouths.

    2. Re:Slackware limitations by higuita · · Score: 1

      ..and Gnome and udev and millions of others I don't have time to list.

      slackware dont even have gnome include right now, so how can be outdated?

      i'm runnig the latest udev, but as slack wants to support 2.4 kernel, cant use the latest, because new udev cant work with kernels below 2.6.15

      Which one? 2.6.0? Are you sure you want to compile from scratch? Wouldn't you like to leave it to someone more knowledgable, like your slackware masters? It will be more user friendly that way.

      i'm runnig the 2.6.15.4...no problem whatsoever compiling... and anyone with a pair of eyes, capable of reading english and with a little of brain can compile the kernel...
      but wait... you want pre-compiled binaries? check this url:

      http://slackware.com/changelog/current.php?cpu=i38 6

      search for 2.6 and you will find this:

      kernels/*.?/*: Recompiled 2.4.32 kernels with gcc-3.4.6, upgraded
                    test26.s kernel to 2.6.15.6.


      for someone pointing to gentoo, not wanting to compile the kernel in slackware is ...err.. something very stupid and idiot

      Given the glacial Slackware release process (isn't it one guy?)

      what, 2 release a per year aren enough for you? how many gentoo releases?
      gentoo have more updated packages? great, i prefer stability and cpu time for my apps, not for compiling

      and yes, its oficially one guy only, but he have many people that helps him, just check the changelog... even gentoo people that also run slackware
      at least the slackware original founder still works in its distro and never worked for MS (if you know what i mean 8)

      I would think you would have learned more patience.

      what a troll... you complain that slackware is outdated, now you ask us for patience for gentoo not being so updated as it should... decide your self please...

      --
      Higuita
  63. Re:hows about...FIXING it? by m50d · · Score: 1
    The kernel devs actually accept it, as long as the bloody reiser devs fixes the obvious defiencies the code has. It has been more than one? two? years since reiser 4 "was ready to be merged" according to hans reiser and the haven't even tried to submit it in the 2.6.16 time frame - a sign that there is not a lot of work to do, for sure (they last time reiser tried it people pointed out him a list of things that haven't been fixed - yeah, reiser sure "was ready to be merged").

    Last time I saw it come up, the only remaining objections were coding style (to which Reiser responded that his style was better, and another flamewar started) and Hans' attitude. Sure, Hans was being an arrogant asshole, but so were many of the kernel devs. There really didn't seem to be any real, non-cosmetic problems with reiser4 - sure, there were a bunch when it was first submitted, but it was a huge chunk of code, and they were all fixed pretty quickly. And given that it was still rejected, what would be the point in submitting it again for 2.6.16?

    Maybe we should accept low-quality code in linux just because it's...reiser and it's c00l? Hey, that's the Microsoft Way, and it works for them! Apparently some people thinks that just because reiser 4 has plugins and plugins sound cool it mean it has zero bugs and all the design mistakes are magically fixed by some sort of magic.

    Not at all. But the reasons it was rejected seem far more political than technical.

    Are you aware that lots of "cool features" were rejected in the past in linux?. Being able to use 1 GB of memory, 64-bit processors, SMP, rmap-based memory management: Those features that sound "natural" today were rejected by Linus because the implementation was HORRIBLE and they weren't merged until someone implemented them in a cleaner way. Why reiser should be different? Linux developers are not going to allow people to fuck up everything because something is "great". It has taken a lot of hard work to take linux where it's now and make it work in 512-cpu SGI beasts, lowering the bar is not going to make linux any better.

    The attitude has changed so much in other respects with 2.6 though. Look at the time any of the new additions took to be accepted - and look at the code quality - and compare it with reiser4. And tell me they're being judged equally.

    --
    I am trolling
  64. Re:hows about...FIXING it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    IIRC, the kernel devs also wanted to do the plugin interface filesystem-agnostic (so that any filesystem can use the plugins)

  65. Definitely Monday! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Definitely Monday! Careful where you put your divisor!

    Nanosecond == 1E-9 == sec/1,000,000,000
    Microsecond == 1E-6 == sec/1,000,000

    1,000,000,000/sec and 1,000,000/sec are GHz and MHz respectively!

  66. Re:Linus' new philosophy of development in main tr by pilot1 · · Score: 1

    Get the hell out of the stable branch!
    Vanilla 2.6 kernels are _not_ considered stable by Linus, the kernel devs, or anyone else important for that matter.
    If you want a stable vanilla kernel, use 2.4.. 2.6 is bleeding edge.

  67. Bugs by Jachra · · Score: 1

    Let the bug hunt begin.

    It is an joke... just smile...

    Rico, bug hole, nuk'm.

  68. Re:Linux is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i can't believe someone with a user id in the 600k got trolled by that... i wish i could say "you must be new here"

  69. Re:Linux is dying by Kennon · · Score: 1

    lol...nicely done. The subject line of your post should have been "How to say the same line of BS 10 times in somewhat different ways." You must be a political speech writer...or a marketing exec for M$.

    --
    "All those moments, will be lost in time...like tears in rain..."
  70. Re:hows about...FIXING it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Last time I saw it come up, the only remaining objections were coding style (to which Reiser responded that his style was better, and another flamewar started) and Hans' attitude

    You must have beenr eading a very different list than me, the last time reiser came up with this topic hch came up with a list of REAL (and "serious")reiser deficiencies. Andrew morton - you know, the kernel maintainer - saved a copy

    The topic hasn't came up again. I assume Reiserfs people is still working on it. Hell, it'd be great to see reiser go in, but without fixing it it's not going go happen

  71. SCSI is dead for CD/DVD writers by erice · · Score: 1

    in general makes life difficult for anyone *not* using a SCSI drive, which 3) is 90%+ of the population

    That's being generous. SCSI CD Burners are now rare. Even "all scsi" Sun boxes use IDE CDROM drives and have for several years. SCSI DVD writers are nearly hypothetical. There are, I think, a few very expensive (kilobuck) professional drives and that's all. You will see a few reasonable looking units advertized on Pricewatch. But look closely and you will find that they are IDE drives with IDE SCSI adapters tacked on.

  72. SCSI command set, not parallel SCSI addressing by r00t · · Score: 1

    The SCSI command set was a big success. It is used for ATAPI, FireWire, and USB. Linux is meant to operate with this. There are no problems here.

    The SCSI card-bus-target-lun addressing scheme is as dead as the old IDE cylindar-head-sector addresses, except for cdrecord. Linux devices are NOT to be addressed by 3 or 4 integer values that pretend to be old-style obsolete parallel SCSI addresses. Linux devices are to be addressed by the ASCII filenames found in the /dev directory. These names can be arbitrary and user-defined, like /dev/QueFire or /dev/HP-burner, so apps should not expect to parse the names.

    Using user-defined names is way better for modern hot-plug busses like USB and FireWire. It also makes more sense for IDE/EIDE/ATA/ATAPI/SATA stuff.

    The cdrecord documentation is delibrately misleading, and the code delibrately spews misleading warnings. Get a patched version from a Linux distribution, never use ide-scsi, and always use the dev=/dev/whatever syntax.

  73. The Slackware Philosophy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Slackware is the distro for when you want to use your current OS as a jumping-off point for further R&D, having everything set default so you don't have to tweak it back there first. It's a great distro for kernel patch development, early-stage distro design and development (did you know that debian originally branched off of Slackware?), and do-it-yourself projects, like LFS. It's also good if you want a single system that you'll maintain completely out of the control of any distributor, the way, for example, that Google does. It is really best, when you have a good enough idea of what you're doing that the phrase "package management" makes you choke on the dust off of the five-foot-tall punchcard stack supporting your monitor.



    To put it another way: Slackware is Linux for UNIX users.

  74. But they're advertising 2.6 as "stable" by Anonymous+Froward · · Score: 1
    From the very front page of kernel.org:
    The latest stable version of the Linux kernel is: 2.6.16
    I don't have any doubt about what you wrote (Linus saying something in line of "2.6 not stable"), but that doesn't make me ignorant nor unreasonable even if I expect 2.6 series to be "stable", whatever that word means. I don't expect 2.6 series to be "stable", but that's another story.
  75. We have that already. :-) by r00t · · Score: 1

    You forgot CLONE_FS. This causes sharing of the current directory, the umask, and the chroot() data. (CLONE_FILES is for the file handles, and CLONE_NEWNS is an inverted flag for the view of filesystem mount points)

    Unfortunately, the POSIX standard mandates that threads share the current working directory. Thus when pthread_create() calls clone() it includes the CLONE_FS flag.

    The user might want that even, but the C library might want to do something else for an internal (hidden to the app programmer) use of threads.

  76. you couldn't be more wrong by r00t · · Score: 1

    The *at() interface comes from Solaris, which is a real UNIX in every way. (including SVR4 code, which BSD is lacking)

    The *at() interface is now being accepted by The Open Group for the next revision of the UNIX and POSIX standard.

    Soon enough, UNIX branding will be denied to any OS without these interfaces.

  77. Yeah, except... by r00t · · Score: 2, Informative
    We don't bit-bang USB!!!

    Oh my. The CPU is not anywhere near fast enough to handle that. USB chips are fed with linked lists of packets. The chip follows the list and sends out the data, using a timer built-in to the USB chip.

    Reception is typically similar. Both transmit and receive are in fact similar to Ethernet or SCSI.

    We do bit-bang I2C busses (in video cards, RAM chips, temperature sensors, fan RPM sensors...) and various automotive and factory automation busses. These busses are way slower than USB.

  78. It worked for Sun by r00t · · Score: 1

    3.x
    4.x
    2.0
    2.1
    2.2
    2.3
    2.4
    2.5
    2.6
    7
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    10

  79. Re:Linus' new philosophy of development in main tr by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm using Debian stable and both kernels (2.6.8 and 2.4.27) are buggy as hell on my machine. It's an old dual PII, so it's not like it's cutting edge, nor is it one of those flaky VIA chipsets.

    If the vendor kernel is the only way to get stability, I might as well switch to BSD.

  80. Re:Linus' new philosophy of development in main tr by hritcu · · Score: 1


          The latest stable version of the Linux kernel is: 2.6.16
    </quote>

    --
    If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
  81. Hobson's choice by Old+Man+Kensey · · Score: 1
    If you want a stable vanilla kernel, use 2.4.. 2.6 is bleeding edge.

    Oh, very nice. "Accept that the kernel is unstable and distro maintainers now have to do a lot of work to make it otherwise, or do a technological time-warp back to 2003."

    You know, I remember when Red Hat's deep-dicking the 2.0 and 2.2 kernels was frowned upon and made fun of and the first thing a lot of people did to get a sane kernel you could add patches to was compile a stock kernel from kernel.org. So now everybody is required to use distro-custom kernels or expect random half-assery, and that's a good thing?

    --
    -- Old Man Kensey
  82. Ah. by jd · · Score: 1

    Emacs would be implemented as a filesystem, not a syscall. Screen would be a virtual framebuffer device. GCC would be an executor, in the same way we've "elf", "a.out" and "misc" at the moment.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  83. Re:Linux is dying by bcmm · · Score: 1

    Don't feed the trolls.

    --
    # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
    Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
  84. Hey, let Linux live! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When a new 2.6 kernel is released, many throw with stones - it is released too early, Linus is wrong with this or with that , no new exciting features etc. etc.
    I think peole are working hard to release a new kernel and we should be grateful.
    And remember, Linux is a mater of choice, pick one to suit you ( no one is forcing you to use 2.6 kernel if you dont want to) or pick M$.
    I personally trust Linus judgement, and other hard workes.