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Linux Kernel 2.6.29 Released

Posted by kdawson on from the fullly-baked dept.

diegocgteleline.es writes "Linus Torvalds has released Linux 2.6.29. The new features include the inclusion of kernel graphic modesetting, WiMAX, access point Wi-Fi support, inclusion of squashfs and a preliminary version of btrfs, a more scalable version of RCU, eCryptfs filename encryption, ext4 no journal mode, OCFS2 metadata checksums, improvements to the memory controller, support for filesystem freeze, and other features. Here is the full list of changes."

11 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Access Point Wi-Fi? by swimin · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ummm I'm pretty sure thats the ability to act as a wifi access point, which windows can't do yet.

  2. The most important missed out feature by LingNoi · · Score: 5, Informative

    I can't believe this wasn't mentioned..

    The most obvious change is the (temporary) change of logo to Tuz, the Tasmanian Devil.

    Here's what the new linux logo looks like for this release.

    1. Re:The most important missed out feature by slash.duncan · · Score: 5, Informative

      I am impressed that Torvalds knows about this issue, and credo to him for raising people's awareness.

      There's rather more community history behind it than that. The below is from memory based on various coverage I read on LWN and the like, but not fact-checked to be positive my memory is correct, so verify before acting on it as fact.

      I believe it was at the annual linux.conf.au, tho I'm not sure but it was some such conference, widely attended by Linux kernel hackers, that the presentation was made. There was apparently a fairly big charity pledge drive related to the issue, with many of the kernel hackers taking part. Various ones of them, in addition to pledging their own money, pledged various acts should the conference pledge drive reach whatever goal ($10K, maybe?).

      Well, the pledge drive was quite a success, and the various hackers either have or are in the process of fulfilling their various promises as a result. One of the ones that made Linux hacker community (and LWN) headlines was Bdale Garbee's pledge, to shave his beard. He hadn't been beardless in, I think, well over a decade (15 years? longer?). There was an LWN article on it with a photo (taken I believe at the closing ceremony or traditional post-conference party) of Linus as barber, doing the honors! =:^)

      That's actually how I first heard about the whole thing, seeing that photo and reading the accompanying article. But apparently Linus' own pledge was to name a kernel version after the Tazmanian Devil. But he has actually gone one better, changing the logo for .29 as well as the name.

      This logo, BTW, is the one the kernel framebuffer driver optionally displays at the top of the screen during boot, if the framebuffer is activated and the config option set to do so. There's a single logo displayed for every CPU/core, so my dual dual-core Opteron displays a nice row of four such logos. I can only imagine the row of 32 of the things on say a quad-socket oct-core machine. =:^)

      Anyway, I've been running a kernel compiled directly from git for a few months now (switching to the stable series between release and rc2 or so, only running mainline git between rc2 and release), and am currently running:

      $uname -r
      2.6.29-rc8-223-ga1e4ee2

      So I've had the pleasure of seeing four of these little beasties at boot for a week or so, now. =:^)

      Anyway, it's not just Linus. It's the entire kernel hacker community that got involved, thanks to linux.conf.au. =:^)

      All that said, while I obviously knew more about the Linux/kernel community side of things and had a bit of general awareness from that, I hadn't bothered reading up on the disease itself until taking the opportunity to click that nice wikipedia link you so thoughtfully provided. Now I know a bit more about it, and am hopefully returning the favor with the above info on the Linux community side of things.

      OK, I did an LWN search and here's some relevant links, so folks can fact-check what I wrote above, as well as quote something more authoritative than just some /. post.

      LWN 2.6.29 kernel announcement (mentions the code name):
      http://lwn.net/Articles/325047/

      That points to Linus' actual announcement (LKML announcement as seen on LWN):
      http://lwn.net/Articles/325048/

      The kernel gets a new logo (a comment links the actual git commit by Rusty Russel):
      http://lwn.net/Articles/323966/

      Beardless Bdale (It'd be interesting to see the stats for this one as related to the Linus in a swimsuit one, I think also linux.conf.au from a few years ago, dunk tank FWIW, see below.)
      http://lwn.net/Articles/316282/

      (FWIW, LCA/linux.conf.au, correct. AU$35-40K raised according to "beardless". With the awareness brought by 2.6.29 related publicity, hopefully much more

      --
      Duncan
      "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master,
      and if you use the program, he is your master."
      R Stallman
  3. Dataloss under Ext4: Obama to blame. by spaceturtle · · Score: 5, Funny

    Further investigation into the cause of dataloss under the Ext4 Filesystem has revealed that it is not the fault of Application Developers, Ext4, nor even the evil POSIX manual of Doom. Its turns out that it Obama is so corrupt that he has caused major dataloss all around the nation. There! At least I'm an *on topic* Troll. Was that so hard?

  4. Re:Filesystems in the kernel! by Zan+Lynx · · Score: 5, Informative

    You only need rootfs, which is a special type of ramfs that loads the initramfs image. initramfs is loaded by the bootloader, so probably GRUB or LILO or ELILO.

    Then if every other filesystem was based on FUSE, you would load the initramfs with the FUSE module, the FUSE setup programs and a config file.

  5. Re:Filesystems in the kernel! by Nicopa · · Score: 5, Informative

    It doesn't work like that. The kernel never uses its own filesystems' support to load itself... How could it if it hasn't been loaded yet? That's the job of a "boot loader". The most user boot loader currently is Grub, and previously was Lilo.

    Grub supports some filesystems, so it can access them and load the kernel. Lilo did not support filesystem, so there was a tool that you needed to run each time you changed the kernel. That tool built a list of blocks, so that Lilo could load the kernel (from those blocks) without really understanding the filesystem.

  6. Use an initrd. by spaceturtle · · Score: 5, Informative

    Even in Linux, most distro's don't have full filesystems built into the kernel. Instead they only build in a tiny in-memory fs that allows them to read an initrd. This means that they can have virtually any filesystem as a root filesystem without having to compile every conceivable filesystem into their general purpose kernel.

    It is also possible to avoid ever booting in the way Linux machines boot. Instead, the boot process could act like the hibernate/resume functionality of Linux. So instead of loading programs into the address space from a filesystem, we simply read the resulting address space from disk. After all, some embedded devices don't need to ever use a filesystem, so in these cases loading a fs would be a waste of resources.

  7. Re:New mascot (this kernel only) by k-macjapan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hello. I have looked into this and found the following site. http://www.tasmaniandevilpark.com/index.html

    The link to their donation form is http://www.tasmaniandevilpark.com/friends.html

    Cheers

  8. Re:Filesystems in the kernel! by hydrofi · · Score: 5, Informative

    Then if every other filesystem was based on FUSE, you would load the initramfs with the FUSE module, the FUSE setup programs and a config file.

    Actually, user space filesystems are nice, but they are way too slow for implementing a high speed server and/or even a decent desktop machine. They are good for experiments and pioneering work though (like GMailFS and SSHFS), but having a good set of fast, basic filesystems in the kernel is just obligatory AFAIK.

  9. Re:I have a dream..... by Abreu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    [sigh]

    This again?

    For the last time, Gnome and KDE are not going to merge! And we don't want them to merge! Healthy, friendly competition is good!

    A Single-Unified-Linux-Desktop is neither desirable nor necessary for "world domination" or even "the year of the Linux Desktop"

    --
    No sig for the moment.
  10. Not what you are asking for but... by Sits · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Linux wireless drivers page lists which drivers support master/access point mode (see the AP column). The list isn't perfect (the hostap driver definitely supports AP mode :-) but it seems to be a case of omissions. The table also says what form factor the supported chipsets come in (so you can tell which ones you will be able to get in USB form). I'd guess the rt2500usb or p54usb drivers would be your best bet.

    Another useful page is the Linux wireless chipset directory which tries to list which cards have which chipsets (there's even a single page table with all the added chipsets but I won't link to it from here). This lets you build a list of boxes with the desired chipsets inside them (finding out whether this is true in reality can in itself can be a fraught process though). The chipset is really the important part in all of this.

    I'm not going to point to an Amazon page because I have not bought a USB wifi card with the capabilities you describe from Amazon. I'm in no position to tell you that XYZ USB device on Amazon definitely works as I haven't done it myself. I have used hostapd on Linux and OpenBSD before now on a creaky old Prism 2.5 card and that worked for me but again that's not what you asked.

    Finally here's a guide to using hostapd to set a card up in access point mode (just using iwconfig to set master mode is not enough). Googling for hostapd linux will turn up plenty more guides which may be easier to follow.

    Good luck!