Linux 2.6.22 Kernel Released

An anonymous reader writes "Linux creator Linus Torvalds announced the official release of the 2.6.22 kernel: 'It's out there now (or at least in the process of mirroring out — if you don't see everything, give it a bit of time).' The previous stable kernel, 2.6.21, was released a little over two months ago. New features in the 2.6.22 kernel include a SLUB allocator which replaces the slab allocator, a new wireless stack, a new Firewire stack, and support for the Blackfin architecture. Source-level changes can be tracked via the gitweb interface to Linus' kernel tree."

Comments

What's SLUB?

[borizz]

TFA is /.ed and wikipedia doesn't help me. What's so good about the SLUB allocater?

Anybody

[Jaaay]

have any information on how good the new wireless stack is? That's what I'm most interested in.

Linux 3.0.0

[Colin Smith]

Ok. You have a major release, it's permission to break all backwards compatibility, to completely change the face of computing.

Given the hardware around. What features should Linux 3.0.0 have?

Re:Linux 3.0.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha ha. Those days are over, baby. Linux is now about legacy and keeping the corporate customers happy. You'll have to wait till the next wonderboy with a funny name dreams up a new, groundbreaking OS. Actually, I'm not sure that there was anything groundbreaking about Linux as an OS, but I suppose that's beside the point, or is it?

Re:Linux 3.0.0

[MichaelSmith]

Given the hardware around. What features should Linux 3.0.0 have?

• The ability to scale from supercomputers, mainframes to handhelds, without recompilation
• Transparent clustering. Run this process somewhere else with as much or as little user control is a required
• Fine grained security. Maybe something which lets you build a userland which can't be exploited in any way shape or form
• Built in support for virtual machines. Something like java in the kernel
• Better APIs for kernel modules. Being able to run some modules in a real sandbox

Re:Linux 3.0.0

[LuckyStarr]

Easy. I'd like it to have these features of course.

Though they gradually sneak into Linux anyway. So no big deal.

Re:Linux 3.0.0

[b1ufox]

> * The ability to scale from supercomputers, mainframes to handhelds, without recompilation

Thats next to impossible for a modern fairly efficient operating system. Why? Because kernels which run on handhelds , supercomputers and mainframes have different constraints in terms of memory, power management and similar technical terminological stuff :).

> * Transparent clustering. Run this process somewhere else with as much or as little user control is a required

Oh boy!!! this is how SMP kernels work when you run them on a multiprocessor systems.

> * Fine grained security. Maybe something which lets you build a userland which can't be exploited in any way shape or form

lolz ...:D i would mod you funny, but thats idiotic, why should kernel worry about user code at all? BTW if you are so paranoid try SELinux.

> * Built in support for virtual machines. Something like java in the kernel

This is what VMI (Virtual machine Interface) does right now in the kernel along with the KVM(kernel virtual machine) and please do not compare and OS with Java stuff. Java do not deserve to be compared to a highly performing kernel.

> * Better APIs for kernel modules. Being able to run some modules in a real sandbox

BTW whats wrong with current APIs?I do not find anything wrong being a developer.And i bet no user needs API, because they do not even care which kernel it is forget API. Sandbox yes, try Xen or any other virtual machine.But do not try to expect a fault tolerant monolithic kernel just for the sake of weird fantasy[atleast not so soon :)]

Re:Linux 3.0.0

[TheLink]

I'd rather have "sandbox templates".

So that I (and my relatives etc) don't have to set up subusers etc.

Basically when I launch some program I see:
"Program: 'Fun ScreenSaver' requires 'Normal ScreenSaver Install' privileges"

Allow: Yes/No?
Give [Drop down list of sandbox templates] privileges instead.
Checkbox - remember decision for this program.

Then I might choose Yes, and the screensaver will be installed as per a normal screensaver - no extra stuff AND when it is launched, it'll only have screensaver access to the system - very sandboxed.

But if I see:
"Program: 'Fun ScreenSaver' requires 'Full User Install' privileges" with a red background I'd probably click No. Same for 'Full System' privileges.

It's not that easy of course - since you need to define a lot of decent defaults - like a safe, flexible and user friendly way to configure the screensaver. AND the templates have got to work - otherwise everyone will just choose 'Full System' ;).

But I think that is what's needed for "Personal Computing Security for the Masses". Not the crap called Vista UAC.

You might use SELinux (or AppArmor) as building blocks, but they are far from sufficient by themselves.

Re:New wireless stack? Firewire stack? WTF?

[Viol8]

Well said. Its about damn time that they spun off 2.7 and started to fix all the bugs in 2.6. This whole 2.6 series has been one horrible mess after another with new features shoe horned in or current ones radically updated with no thought to people using 2.6 on production systems.

Re:What is this?

[smittyoneeach]

2.6.22 certainly has the scalability, but does it hate itself sufficiently?

Re:But is disk IO fixed on amd64?

[gmack]

IMO there is nothing wrong with backporting new drivers (which should only affect people who use the hardware for which the new drivers are designed, not any other users of the kernel) into a stable kernel tree.

Except that in this thread people have been blaming the SATA problems on the new development method but in this case there would have been no difference.

The downside to backporting was that the differences between 2.4.x and 2.5.x were so large that the driver interfaces had a tendency to be completely different and the 2.4.x infrastructure in some cases just wasn't able to handle the newer drivers. In the case of one RAID card the 2.4.x drivers were just hopeless and I had to actually wait two weeks for 2.5.x to be stable enough and install it on my server and just hope it wouldn't crash.

What...

[Ayanami Rei]

JFS is one of the better linux filesystems. And while you can't select it in the installer, you can definitely install the tools to support JFS from universe in Kubuntu, and it's similarly available in the Fedora base repositories. The kernels come with the modules pre-built already, so...

And you can shrink and grow them. And it has nice backup and fsck utilities... Oh, and it supports extended attributes and ACLs and all that good stuff. And it's faster than XFS.

So use it!

Re:Upgrade

[Technician]

However I am running Kubuntu Feisty. Maybe it's time for an upgrade?

Probably true. I'm running Dapper because I have a life. I spend little time as a noob putzing with it. I'm more of an end user. I settled on Dapper because it is the LTS version so I wouldn't have to be on the 6 month upgrade cycle.

Anyway, in a couple years, I'll upgrade. In the meantime I'll enjoy the sunshine and warm weather, camping, etc. When rainy weather sets in and I have time to blow my install and learn how to recover it, I'll ditz with it.

In the meantime, I have a date with a jetski.