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Next Linux Kernel Due Early March

Posted by timothy on from the that's-what-I-call-a-public-good dept.

swandives writes "The Linux.conf.au is in full-swing in Wellington, New Zealand, and Computerworld Australia has an interview with Jon Corbet in the leadup to his Kernel Report. The latest kernel release is due early March and will include reversed-engineered drivers for Nvidia chipsets."

8 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. Thank goodness for those drivers by Arancaytar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have such a chipset and I've been cursing NVIDIA on a regular basis. After updating to any new kernel, I must boot into no-X mode, then run the proprietary driver installer.

    1. Re:Thank goodness for those drivers by amRadioHed · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You'll still need to do that if you want 3D support. nouveau is replacing the old nv driver, but it's not ready to replace the proprietary driver.

      --
      We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
    2. Re:Thank goodness for those drivers by l2718 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I have such a chipset and I've been cursing NVIDIA on a regular basis.

      You must be new to this "Linux" thing. That your Hardware OEM is providing Linux drivers at all is highly unusual. That the drivers are effective is astounding -- that the installer provided the drivers is rudimentary is not worth complaining over. In any case if you really mind I'm sure you can write a replacement installer.

    3. Re:Thank goodness for those drivers by Xeleema · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Hm, to quote a near-forgotten troll; "You Do It Wrong"

      ProTip: Hit linuxquestions.org and post a detailed outline of your problem. Be sure to include things like versions, names of distributions, and how many servers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H desktops you're having this issue on.

      I'm sure you're not running X on bootup on a server, right?

      --
      "When I am king, you will be first against the wall..."
    4. Re:Thank goodness for those drivers by Culture20 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      So, Nvidia writes drivers for your system, and those drivers work. What's the problem?

      Indeed, I have no problem with that. I've been using Linux or long enough to remember having to spend a lot of time getting around issues of hardware compatibility. Nvidia was in there quite early on providing good drivers for its chipsets at a time when just about every other manufacturer just shrugged its shoulders and told us to "Fuck off, We don't support Linux." That alone has promoted a lot of goodwill as far as I'm concerned, and so nVidia chipsets are right at the top of my preferred brands list. So I get very tired of hearing people badmouthing nVidia without giving an adequate reason why.

      Goodwill Schmoodwill. This is business. For quite some time, the only way I've been able to easily install Ubuntu on several of my Nvidia machines has been by swapping out the graphics card(s) for ATI, installing the OS and nvidia drivers, then installing the Nvidia cards again. True, this is an Ubuntu issue, since they insist on a GUI install only (sorry, but the alternate CD is a pain, at least use curses to emulate a GUI before making Mom and Pop use Debian), and they don't include the nvidia driver on the CD. The nv and vesa drivers are both broken for lots of nvidia cards (nv causes green verical lines, and vesa just crashes X continuously.
      If Nvidia had created a usable neutered (2D) OSS driver that Just Worked (TM) with their cards, a la ATI/IBM, then I'd still be suggesting their cards for Linux newbies like I did back in the Aughties. Instead, I've been suggesting IBM first, ATI next, and Nvidia only for experienced folk who need superior OpenGL cards.

  2. Dtrace for Linux? by fibrewire · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Tell me more about this dynamic ftrace. Are there any "how-to" basic scripts to fire off a SNMP trap when ftrace picks up something of importance? It's nice for debugging, but more importantly to tie this into some network monitoring system like Nagios to be used for clustering and high availability systems. This could easily be integrated to prevent runaway virtual machines, and actually see whats robbing a system of CPU cycles - perfect for performance tuning a VM stack.

  3. Will the kernel ever get to 3? by petes_PoV · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Most releases seem to be minor improvements: a few bug fixes, re-porting to another architecture, some new drivers and tweaks to (or reimplementations of) existing features such as VM or filesystems.

    Are we ever going to see major new features (along the lines of the USB implementation, or SMP), or a major re-think? Or is this basically as good as it will ever get?

    It does appear to me that all the kernel is doing these days is mimicking the features and support found in "other" operating systems - rather than pushing the boundaries of innovation and novelty, itself.It would be a shame if Linux just fell into line and became a follower in a world of twisty little O/S's, all the same rather than producing some killer features, unique to it's implementation, that made people WANT to run Linux on their desktops and enterprise systems.

    --
    politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
  4. Flickering on Intel chipsets by Jack+Malmostoso · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I upgraded to 2.6.33-rc4 from 2.6.32 because of strong flickering and tearing on my Intel chipset.
    If you're affected by the problem you might want to give it a shot even in -rc state.