Linux 2.6.34 Released

diegocg writes "Linux 2.6.34 has been released. This version adds two new filesystem, the distributed filesystem Ceph and LogFS, a filesystem for flash devices. Other features are a driver for almost-native KVM network performance, the VMware balloon driver, the 'kprobes jump' optimization for dynamic probes, new perf features (the 'perf lock' tool, cross-platform analysis support), several Btrfs improvements, RCU lockdep, Generalized TTL Security Mechanism (RFC 5082) and private VLAN proxy arp (RFC 3069) support, asynchronous suspend/resume, several new drivers and many other small improvements. See the full changelog here."

Comments

All Very Nice But...

[mrpacmanjel]

Is the RT2500-based chipset working reliably now?

The developers switched to a new driver model because it's "better".

If "better" means once-working wifi chipset becomes grossly unstable, previous drivers are considered "legacy" hence will not compile on kernels later that 2.6.29 and current drivers are as stable as a "one-legged man playing football".

A few years later and 2.6.34 is released - is it working yet?

Considering the RT2500 chipset is present many wifi products the current state of "stability" is woefully inadequate.

(and don't get me started on f***ed up i845 drivers for xorg! - worked fine under previous kernels & xorg an update later by both - graphics performance royally screwed and many crashes)

Apart from that - happy Linux user for over 10 years!

Re:All Very Nice But...

[dbIII]

Is the RT2500-based chipset working reliably now?

Here's how the dismal state of support for that chipset was explained to me.
The answer is probably that mine has worked for years and yours hasn't. The really annoying thing is a lot of slightly different things have come out under that name and even under MS Windows if you don't use the driver that came with it you are stuffed - a driver for another undocumented variant won't help.

Re:All Very Nice But...

[mrpacmanjel]

The problem for me is that the "legacy" drivers were rock solid and I never thought about it until kernel 2.6.30 & greater were released.

My wifi was ultra-reliable under the "legacy" drivers.

Since the newer drivers were released I have had nothing but problems.

What changed between old and new drivers?

GPU switching

[TheLink]

> Some laptops have two GPUs, a low-power and inefficient GPU and a high-power and powerful GPU. Users should be able to switch to one or another at runtime. In this version, Linux adds support for this feature. You need to restart X, though.

How do you restart X without affecting all your GUI apps? If you can't restart X without bringing down your GUI apps, I don't see the point for the target audience.

For some people, "only having to restart X" will only save a bit of time over rebooting the whole laptop, reconfiguring bios etc.

Re:GPU switching

[Kjella]

Good question, but wrong project. The kernel is only responsible for initializing, suspending, resuming and lately modesetting of the hardware and it seems that is possible now. There probably needs to be some userspace code to pull information from one GPU and load it into the other but that's for the xorg server to do. They're probably working on it but it won't be in a Linux (the kernel) release announcement.

Re:Excellent

[1s44c]

You don't put bleeding edge or custom kernels on production servers without seriously heavy testing. You would not run production stuff on a windows beta release would you? It's the same thing.

Stick to proper releases of good distributions and customize as little as possible. You will get a system many times more stable than anything MS has ever come up with.

Re:Excellent

[1s44c]

Yeah... that's not going to happen. Not only am I good at what I do (seriously, how many system administrators even take their time to compile custom kernels nowadays for maximum performance?), but a very close relative is also the CEO. I bet people here even use us for their hosting :)

There is a massive amount of difference between being able to compile a custom kernel and being in the kind of situation where it's the right thing to do. 'Good at what you do' doesn't mean technically brilliant, it means doing the right thing at the right time.

Keeping your job because you are related to the CEO is the kind of nepotism that kills otherwise good companies.

Re:Excellent

[1s44c]

What, can't be. According to slashdot all Linux administrators are born as black belt Linux experts and Windows administrators are all people that got lucky bumbling through their MSCE exam.

Noone is born a black belt at anything. You have to work at it. There are inexperienced Linux admins just like there are inexperienced windows admins. The ones who can't or don't want to learn end up on windows eventually.

Re:Excellent

[Blakey Rat]

Wow, two wooshes in one thread.

Also:

The ones who can't or don't want to learn end up on windows eventually.

That's the dumbest fucking thing I have ever read in my life.

You're seriously delusional if you think that Windows servers are inferior to Linux servers in any way. (Well, "any" way is an overstatement, but any practical way.) If you're doing communication, Exchange is great. If you're doing filesharing/single sign-on, Active Directory is also great. IIS is as good, or better, than Apache at all benchmarks, and has more features. Decent support for technologies like OLAP pretty much only exist on Windows at the moment.

Nobody's going to argue that Windows is cheaper than Linux. But arguing that it's worse, that's harder to make-- unless of course you know fuck-all about Windows and just repeat FUD on Slashdot all day.