Linux 2.6.37 Released

diegocg writes "Version 2.6.37 of the Linux kernel has been released. This version includes SMP scalability improvements for Ext4 and XFS, the removal of the Big Kernel Lock, support for per-cgroup IO throttling, a networking block device based on top of the Ceph clustered filesystem, several Btrfs improvements, more efficient static probes, perf support to probe modules, LZO compression in the hibernation image, PPP over IPv4 support, several networking microoptimizations and many other small changes, improvements and new drivers for devices like the Brocade BNA 10GB ethernet, Topcliff PCH gigabit, Atheros CARL9170, Atheros AR6003 and RealTek RTL8712U. The fanotify API has also been enabled. See the full changelog for more details."

Comments

Kernel locking

[iONiUM]

Well I'm glad they officially fixed the kernel lock. Out of curiosity, how long until Ubuntu or Debian sees this integrated into their line? A year? Not trolling, I only started using Ubuntu recently, so I'm curious.

Re:Kernel locking

[Cyberax]

Ubuntu in about 6 months, 2.6.37 should be in the 11.04 release.

In Debian Stable - in about 2 years (in the next release).

Re:Kernel locking

[Bootsy Collins]

Would someone mind explaining (for those of us who have some C experience, but aren't kernel hackers) what the Big Kernel Lock is? In particular, is this something that will impact the desktop user?

Re:Kernel locking

[Kjella]

And this is one example of why the kernel doesn't have a stable ABI. You can bet tons of unmaintained third party drivers would use the BKL, so you could never get rid of it. From what I've understood purging it from every driver has been a pretty big job and only possible because all the drivers are in the kernel tree.

Re:Btrfs

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using it for nearly 2 years without any issues whatsoever (I haven't even had to fiddle with it to keep it going). It's been in the kernel for over 1 year.

They're well beyond "some sort of working version, even if it doesn't do much". Give it a try.

Re:Btrfs

[0100010001010011]

Before I committed ANY data to ZFS I sure as heck "played around with it" in virtual machines until I was comfortable doing about anything with it.

"Pull" one of the drives. What happens?
dd if=/dev/random of= to your disk in random places (skip/seek), what happens to your data.
Pull all of the drives and replace it with a larger one.

How are the user tools for btrfs? zpool & zfs are fairly well documented and have very simple short commands.

Does it automatically share over nfs/samba like you can with ZFS on Solaris?

Versioning?

[fuzza]

So, what's the deal here - have they pretty much abandoned the old "odd minor releases for development, no new features in stable versions" plan, or what?