Slashdot Mirror
Linux 2.3.0
Beret was the
first to report that the new 2.3 directory that was appearing
on the kernel mirrors now contains what looks suspiciously
like a 2.3 kernel. Also includes patches from 2.2.8 if you
want 'em. No word on what is new.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Do let rob know if you see 2.8 though!
your not the sharpest tool in the toolshed are you? 2.2.8 ... 2.3.0
not 2.8. not unless your living in the far away future.
he's jokin'
:)
Yeah, it is/was fzzzed up. The links led to something called "MIT Crickets". Maybe it's some bizzare East Coast "Fun with SQL" project associated with the sophmore rights of spring.
2.2.x is stable, and has been (for the most part) since 2.2.0. However, it is not DEAD, and will continue to be maintained and updated with fixes and minor feature additions (just as 2.0.x was and is).
2.3.x allows us to test out some awesome new things including (possibly) journaled and trie-based filesystems, better sound and graphics support, and many other exciting things.
So, drink a cold beer and relax.
So, what's the problem?
2.2.X has been rock solid here, a 2.2.3 had an
uptime of some 60 days on a busy server before
I upgraded (to test the new scheduling code).
Post a bugreport if you ever see 2.2.8 crash.
Though, I doubt it will and I doubt you would do
if it did.
Well, he does have a point that newbies probably shouldn't upgrade to the development kernels and he's probably pointing that out to any newbies who might not know that. Although I don't quite know how you could know enough to download and compile a new kernel and not yet have figured out how kernel version numbers go...
That's why there's more than one person doing linux kernel development. You don't need an army to make small enhancements/bug fixes to an already stable kernel. You need Alan Cox and a small group of volunteers. That way Linus and the majority of the kernel developers can concentrate on adding new features such as a journalled file system (ever tried fscking a 2GB linux partition? Now imagine fscking 20GB's).
Hey! This didn't deserve to be -1'ed, just a minor correction: a.b.c is stable when b is an EVEN integer, and a is a positive integer.
he was sarcastically pointing out the fact that rob put 2.8 in the post...it was a joke dumbass...
I certainly hope there will be more support for single-OS image clustering. Then I can send my army of darklord 486 machines to go tackle something useful, like compiling kernels without taking an hour.5.
I haven't been following the kernel release for a while. Can some kind soul give me a hint on what are the major changes from the 2.2.5 release, which is included in RH6.0.
Are there any major enhancement to performance?
Any comments will be welcome.
Uhm. Linux is already ahead of NT both in clustering and multi processing. NT does 4 CPUs, so does Linux. What it needs to catch up to, is other Unices.
and i don't recall annoucements made for Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, Unixware, Novell, BSD/OS, AIX, or anything else that remotely resembles the spawn-of-satan corporate world.
Quite hypocritical, in my opinion. I would rather see very infrequent Linux kernel updates than this disparity.
Another interesting point was that /. only posted news about the capture of the Melissa virus designer and the methods of capture, but when the NT Exchange Administrators were about to be hit with some overtime, did they post my information that I was trying to get out to the Admins on how to clean out the mailboxes before the users could spread it even further? Nope...
This is now my second site of preference...
yes, it takes awhile :P :P
/mp3_1 /mp3_2 /mp3_3 /mp3_4 /mp3_5
on this system, p233, 64 meg ram, it takes about 20-25 minutes, to e2fsck all 79ish gig.
hda is an old 6.4 western digital udma, hdb is a free maxtor udma 17.2 from onsale, and hdc and hdd are a pair of 20.3 gig ibm udma deskstars.
md0, is a pair of 4.3 seagate hawks, and an 8.7 micropolis tomahawk, linear raided together.. i suppose i should buy another battery bacup, it takes FAR too long to e2fsck when the cable works loose and i have to reboot
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/hda1 1.4G 231M 1.1G 17% /
/dev/hdc1 19G 7.9G 11G 42%
/dev/hdd1 19G 12G 6.5G 65%
/dev/hdb1 16G 9.0G 6.9G 56%
/dev/hda3 4.5G 13K 4.5G 0%
/dev/md0 16G 4.7G 11G 30%
OSS Sound flatly refuses to install because it only supports up to version 2.2.99
Yes, OSS only works against versions close to what it was compiled for in order to deter piracy. I would reccomend that after applying the 2.3.0 patch, you edit /usr/src/linux/Makefile and change the version values to 2.2.8. This should ensure that OSS works correctly while still providing all the great new features of 2.3.0
The updates provide the latest security features and latest drivers. Obviously, you don't have
to upgrade unless the changes affect you. Also,
these are kernel releases and are fairly trivial to implement. The "upgrade" is for the kernel only; not all the packages. Upgrading an entire release can be a real hassle for Linux.
It takes 'em a few days to post the latest changes, some people want to know if the upgrades fix their particular problem now.
I used 2.1.55 at first when I got my Alphastation and wanted decent Alpha support that was better than what was in the 2.0.x kernels... that and it had better NFS and multiple disk (RAID) support that I wanted to play with. Since then I upgraded to 2.1.88 and have been running that ever since on my Redhat 4.2 system.. has been running fine for the last 200 days or so. (had to reboot it do to power failures.. eventually got a UPS for it). Solid as a rock though serving NFS and doing web proxying and DNS for my little home network. If one of my scsi drives in the array hadn't died I would have been up for longer than that. Oh well. :-) I guess eventually I'll have to find the Alpha version of Red Hat 6.0 (in ISO format hopefully?) and reinstall to freshen the system out! ;-)
Blah - I was hoping this was Alans "secret" project
:-(
Merced ?
Linux 2.3.0 indeed marks the biggest hyper ever here on /. over a nonproduct. The only thing that was changed was a version number, and right now I'm counting over 100 posts. This PROVES that people pay more attention to version numbers than the actual technical development of a product.
pre-2 is up as well
I'm having problems with 2.2.7 *and* ac's patch.
Freshly downloaded code, giving me "unresolved symbols" on a ethernetcard module. Now I'm by no means a kernel god, but while building that kernel the exact symbols came into focus as "unused variables". Clueless here
And 2.3.1-2 has been out for over two hours now.. ;-)
Each part of the version number is 8 bits.
(well, the major number could be 16 bits)
>What happens in the BSD camp if a major flaw is released? Do people have to wait for the next quarter? Of course not, that would be ridiculous.
:-)
We simply run CVSup and do a make world when we feel that a part of the system had an important change(by reading the cvs logs)
Cathedral my ass. We don't have any dictators(=Linus) in the BSD camp
-T
It looks like as if new wake-one semantics for web servers (Apache) are behind these changes. There is a new TASK_EXCLUSIVE flag which is used by __wake_up.
The wait-queue changes also show that there are per-waitqueue spinlocks, which should further improve SMP scalability. Waitqueues seem to be *much* cleaner this way.
Can we now please have ggi in the kernel? Thank :)
you very much
I also wouldn't mind seeing the crypto patches
(from kerneli) patched in statically if and when
the stupid US laws are finally history.. can't be
asked to get them for every kernel separately..
brn
When I post comments about articles that are Windows-only complaining that they are off-topic, they get moderated down to a -1. Recent examples include an Ask Slashdot about Windows web development tools and a new NT-only ethernet adapter.
However, when this person posts an off-topic gripe about Linux starting a new development tree - which is HUGE news - it gets bumped up to +3.
This is ridiculous. Slashdot is really losing touch. You started out as a Linux e-zine that also posted anything interesting to Linux nerds, which includes FreeBSD and other Unixes, and things about Microsoft that may interest us.
I'm glad that you are posting less anti-Microsoft articles. But you are going too far in the wrong direction.
Maybe you should have a "nolinux.slashdot.org" web site for all the un-Linux folks.
Mark
2.2.x has worked fine for me on my SMP Celeron system all along; every dot release I've tried, once I got rid of a flaky video card.
You are wasting time posting here - send the report to linux-kernel and ask what you can do to track it down.
It will be difficult but kernel debugging is never easy.
yeah! .. i want GGI on the kernel (KGI) .. thats will be a great advance for linux, especially for democoders.. i want a linux-demoscene... (hey.. i dont see demoscene related stuff in slashdot!)
GGI rules!
GGI is, as gfx systems go, not that bad.
HOWEVER - the place for a non-hw independent gfx subsystem is not in kernel space - why does NT4 crash so often compared to NT 3...that's right - the gfx drivers were moved into the kernel...
GGI is not architecture independent, and is stuck fairly squarely on intel arch PCs.
XFree86 4.0 will alao not be significantly slower than GGI, and much more powerful, since it has DGA for direct rendering, and will have the PI glx architecture for 3D.
Linux is multiplatform - GGI is not. Let it remain a separate patch, and not piss off all the
Amiga, Sparc, Mac, Alpha, etc. etc. linux users out there. (N.B. those ARE hardware architectures - the respective "default OSes" for these architectures are AmigaOS, Solaris, MacOS, Tru64.)
My main desktop system has been runnning Redhat 4.1 since, well, since it came out. I've updated the kernel once to 2.0.35 and have been there ever since.
Seems to me FreeBSD's only have quarterly releases because there simply isn't much new stuff going on to warrant anything faster. Linux is where the action is, and I'm stickin to it!
Actually they both do more than four. I know for a fact there's a 8-Xeon 500 box on I believe it was www.penguinpower.com.. costs a mear $130,000 or so...
This is off-topic sorta.. But I ran into some interesting problems with SMP. I have a Tyan Tomcat IV with dual 233MMX cpu's (socket 7), 80M ram, a 6.4G and an 8.4G HD. With the 2.0.x kernel, enabling SMP worked perfectly fine (abid it was very new). Upgrading to the 2.2.x kernels proved a major problem.. Linux would detect CPU at 232 MHz, and then freez at the calibrating delay loop. I emailed the bugs list.. and Alan Cox told me to pass the kernel the 'noapic' option.. which I did.. and which failed as if I hadn't even tried using it. If you have ANY clue how I could fix this.. or what exactly is wrong.. please let me know. The only way I could boot my machine is using bare.i from slack 4.0 (or that network one).. and then passing it the mount root=/dev/hda2 which would load my real 2.2.x kernel w/o SMP support in any form. Thanks. (And I hope it's a hell of a lot easier to troubleshoot these problems in 2.3.x ;) ) Ron Rossman rjr162@psu.edu
GGI is all well and good so long as you're using a PeeCee clone computer.
We don't need the linux kernel code muddied up, and its new-found architectureindependence screwed up by, an intel-arch only gfx patch that you can just use DGA under X to get the same speed for anyway.
Keep it as a third-party kernel patching option, like RTLinux (Real Time Linux).
With GGI, you could probably distribute a loadable kernel module binary with most of the KGICon functionality for those too stupid to work out how to compile their own kernel (and there'll be lots of them in the future, most likely).
Linus decides (actually he delegates to other people these days) what goes into _his_ official linux kernel source tree. You don't have to run linux if you don't like that:
Under the GPL, you're free to take all the code and start your own kernel tree, called, say, Bertux. Of course, also under the GPL, you must make all your changes public. Then linux will just take all the good bits from your kernel. Nothing stopping you from doing the same, but what's the point ?
That's why linux has not fragmented like BSD,
and simultaneously evolves much faster.
Even MicroSoft could make a linux distro, if they saw fit. Forutnately, and unlike BSD, they'd be legally required to make all their changes public. If you look a lot of MS's tools, they're BSD-derived ( but with delibrate incompatibilities introduced for vendor lock-in...)
>GGI is not architecture independent, and is stuck fairly squarely on intel arch PCs.
... and on Linux-x86,-Alpha and ...
>Linux is multiplatform - GGI is not. Let it remain a separate patch, and not piss off all the
>Amiga, Sparc, Mac, Alpha, etc. etc. linux users out there.
First of all, the parts of GGI that isn't supposed
to go into the kernel (like libggi), is platform independent. I have personally tried it on a sparc.
Regarding the part of GGI that may or may not go into the kernel (KGI), this is from the GGI FAQ:
KGI is the Kernel Graphics Interface we use for writing hardware drivers. It is designed to be OS- and platform
independent. So in theory, a KGI driver should run on Linux as well as on DOS, MacOS,
-68k
Check your facts before spreading FUD!
/M
Scratch that.. it's www.penguincomputing.com
Very nice system if you have atleast $48,000 for the least options possible
This (2.3.0) is important news for developers and irrelevent for newbies. So, the importance is relative. Just because it isn't important to you, doesn't mean it's unimportant or hype.
Cute, fucking, lame, troll.
HELLO?
ANYONE HOME?
CLUE PHONE IS RINGING OFF ThE HOOK!!
Dont upgrade every other kernel. There has been nothing mission critical since 2.2.0 was released that requries you to upgrade to the latest and greatest "stable" release every other day. It seems to me that FluBSD has gone through at least one MAJOR release and four MINOR release levels since Linux kernel 2.1.x development began. It was somewhere around FluBSD 2.2.x when Linux 2.1.x began its process. Where is FluBSD at now? 3.1!~?!~!~? Sheesh. It is people like you that have caused such a rift in the *BSD fan-club and people like you who encourage me to NEVER use FluBSD.
Nobody runs anything important on Cyrix crap. Get a real computer please. Linux 2.2.x has been rock solid for me.
A few things of note here for our Linux friends that may have been obscured:
A *release* is a snapshot of a particular source tree. FreeBSD *releases* about 4 times a year.
Tracking -current is effectively the same as tracking Linux x.(odd number). Severe code breakage can and does occur while things are tried out. This is where architectural changes are worked in.
Tracking -stable is effectively the same as tracking Linux x.(even number). Security fixes,
bug fixes, and occasionally new features/drivers well-tested in -current wind up in -stable (which
is an ever-changing tree, though slower and more
considered than the -current tree).
Nothing in either Linux or FreeBSD development model 'closes the doors' to development - all are
free to submit patches/new code. CVS logs are available under FreeBSD just as they are under Linux.
That would be Sunny too.
Will the first person that can get X running
a) NON suid-root
b) So that it doesn't leave your terminal
in an unusable state when it crashes
c) So that it is possible to kill it when it
has hung (i.e so that it doesn't have complete
control of the keyboard)
please speak up.
SUID-ROOT X is a liability.
As is SVGA lib -- and one small graphics
hardware interface layer in the kernel is
better then 1001 libraries and programs
needing to be run as root.
I can (and hence am remaining anon.)
It was a shiny new 6x86 P150+
Week 1: Nice, quick and reliable
Week 2: Tried running Quake -- runs like a P60
Week 3: Few random crashes...
Week 4: Dead
p.s. There was no apparent cooling problem.
p.s. The chip was not being run above 120Mhz
p.s. I HATE f'ing Cyrix
p.s. Have you ever seen their fudget (our chips
match intels on FPU tasks that most people
use -- a simple Excel spreadsheet...)
Mmmm, yeah, me thinks they call that Mach.
Last time I checked, NT does not do any clustering and has no plans to do so. The power of linux is not on the biggest and baddest machine that HW manufactureers want to sell you, but a fileserver made of cheap HW that willl be up forever and fast enough to forget about for a few years. A cheap machine, now, with a big HD will run for years with Linux, asa long as you update the kernel from time to time. Try that with NT, you must pay the couple hunderd/thousand dollars each version(i.e. bug fix)costs and the best machines money can buy. That is my question about the MindCraft benchmark. Who runs a Quad Xeon for anything.
File serving & Web serving: all i have to say is more & smaller machines == more redundancy at the same price.
The PGP signature will consist of mostly "random" bits (ie. no pattern), which makes it difficult to compress. In fact, I tried with "gzip -9" and the signature file down to 332 bytes from 344. So, the compressed patch truly does seem to be smaller than the compressed (or uncompressed) PGP signature. Kinda funny. :-)
An anonymous moderator here. I actually tried to get your post moderated up, but apparently, someone else has moderated it down again.
I think dissenting voices are important, and I try to make it a point to moderate up posts that express viewpoints different from the norm. But it's an uphill struggle against the many moderators here who are only too censor-happy, particularly when it comes to 'sensitive' topics like Linux. I've actually had critical (but reasonable I think) posts of my own on Linux moderated to -1 before.
I suggest that everyone set their threshold to -1 to see what moderators are hiding from you. Also, email cmdrtaco if you think the dissenting voices are being unfairly silenced.
Mmmm.. i dont sure if u know anything about GGI, but GGI is __PORTABLE__ , and X/DGA is SLOW, memory hungry, not flexible, and insecure, in all systems.
i dont see what is the problem in distribute KGI with the kernel, in replace of the kernel framebuffer support.
(I want to start my computer, code something, see demos _without start X_)
and, KGIcon is another thing to discuse later...
Agree.
Yes, the site should be renamed news for geeks.
I'll point out: The poster did NOT say he was running a Cyrix, he said when Alan hacked the Cyrix code he broke 5 other subsystems. That looks like a time association, not a "5 Cyrix-specific subsytems" association.
:)
That having been said, I've a Cyrix, and while I don't run anything "important" on it, I also don't have any problems with it, including compiling (and running) 2.2.5. In any case, Cyrix was part of the reason (secondary to AMD, but an influence) that Intel did the Celeron, which is a big win for everyone... esp. with the SMP hacks and adapters.
Where'd Meept go?
I'm wishing my old 16.8 ibm deskstar hadn't crashed, taking the other 16.8 in the /dev/md0 chain with it.. lost bout 15 gig of stuff i still haven't been able to find/restore :/
If they decided to call it Solaris 7, why does it say SunOS 5.x when you do uname etc...
I didn't say I wanted that kind of stuff. What I think I'm getting at is that perhaps there's a need for a sister site to slashdot. One less concerned with news, and more concerned with interesting tidbits. Anyone remember reading fascinating tech documents about Xbar and all that telco stuff way back? Where has that gone?
:) where weebs, geeks and nerds from the 'inside' release cool docs to the public. Or people dig up old how-to's on miscellany. Hell, I'd love to read about design strategies for medieval catapults.
:). What I want is an info site for geeks.
Imagine a site called lowdowndirtyinsidertechdocs.org (just 'techdocs.org' might get more incidental hits
Perhaps kernel 3.1.789 *IS* big news (it's out by the way
Anyway, I'm glad that something like this can spark debates. Maybe we need a constantly running TOPICS topic for discussions such as this.
Regards,
--
Looks ratehr basic to me....
:= $(shell uname -m | sed -e s/i.86/i386/ -e s/sun4u/sparc64/ -e s/arm.*/arm/ -e s/sa110/arm/)
---[ begin patch-2.2.8-to-2.3.0 ]----
diff -u --recursive --new-file v2.2.8/linux/Makefile linux/Makefile
--- v2.2.8/linux/Makefile Tue May 11 13:10:27 1999
+++ linux/Makefile Tue May 11 13:03:06 1999
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
VERSION = 2
-PATCHLEVEL = 2
-SUBLEVEL = 8
+PATCHLEVEL = 3
+SUBLEVEL = 0
EXTRAVERSION =
ARCH
----[ end patch-2.2.8-to-2.3.0 ]----
*shrug*
-Darran Rimron
Aren't 2.x where x is odd experimental kernels?
Linux kernels seem to be appearing a little too quickly. Honestly, these overly-frequent kernel releases (followed by patches nearly the next day) create upgrade mayhem for sysadmins who want ot cover their asses by staying up to date.
I see the haphazard release schedule as a growing weakness for linux.
As an alternative - I suggest FreeBSD. New releases are made quarterly (at most), and the CVSup tool provides an intelligent way to upgrade from sources.
Most sysadmins I know who have used both swear that FreeBSD is far easier to upgrade, and is far more sane in its release schedule.
For crying out loud! It's only a freaking Kernel update! Surely there's more and better news for nerds. How 'bout something nerdy related to the war, or the space program, or radical new supercomputer developments, or quantum computing, or artificial intelligence, or fly-by-wire systems in jet aircraft, or the newest advance in FPGAs, or... or... what about the latest in schemes for disposing nuclear waste, or stuff on chip fab theft, or proposals for disease outbreak control, or electronic retinal/cochlear implants, or the newest artificial limb design. You see, there's a huge void here at slashdot.org. Where's all the articles on cool geek stuff? I'd like to see more links to neat tech docs than the latest Linux version increment. Linux does not account for 40% of stuff that matters (it's approximate proportion an slashdot). I don't even care if it's new or not. If someone finds a cool link to a geek doc from 1977, then that's fine by my nerdy ass. I want a place to just learn about misc cool stuff. Hey, that's it! I'm gonna start a web site called miscdot.org. No I'm not, but I'd read it if it existed. Anyone want to create one? Then all the true geeks can read that, while the latest free-love Linux hippie can read linuxdot... err I mean slashdot. So people... if you come across an interesting tech doc, post it to slashdot! It don't matter if it's new or not. There is still hope for this place. Or how about even tech docs on how Linux *works*? I'd love to read that instead of a post about how the version number in ftp directories has changed.
Regards,
--
PS> I hope I don't get down-moderated for my slightly negative post. I think what I've said has some merits. Comments, anyone?
Novice Foo downloads and compiles an experimental
kernel. It thrashes his filesystem. Which of the
following two responses do you think will be
the most common.
1. Boy, that really learnt me a lesson. Now lets
hack the kernel and fix the problem that caused
the crash.
2. What kind of overhyped and crappy operating
system is this?
--
Fredrik Henbjork
http://o112.ryd.student.liu.se
It's not "slashdot" that is downgrading your posts... it is the readership (moderators) who evidently don't agree with your perspective. I agree that it's too bad that moderation sometimes has this effect, but it's more a result of the linux hippies than of slashdot itself. I think there are going to be a lot more people who don't filter out -1 postings before too long!
2.2.x is the current stable tree. (all 2.n.x kernels are stable (where n is an odd integer)) with the advent of the 2.3.x tree, expect to see NEW unstable (beta) releases of the kernel.
Actually ive seen newbies confused about the kernel version differances and think they HAVE to upgrade. Just like all the people who think they HAVE to upgrade each time a new stable release comes out, just because it came out. Another thing,... I dont think the original poster of this thread put things right.. (or rather,... politely). A little bit reworded and a small explenation of WHY these development kernels are called development kernels and WHY some times there unstable helps a lot, otherwise you get a good deal of press from either ignorant or just anti linux writers claiming how linux changes so much and how there are allways these broken releases and etc etc... Well given the fact it was a few years from 2.0 to 2.2 I would have to say linux is one of the more stable platforms out there. (and I dont mean this considering its ability NOT to crash... but rather,.. the feature set does not radically change that often,... and when it does change the changes will stay around for a good time before moving else where.. most people (in the press...) cant grasp that)
:)
:) (THAT and I like working on code so.... :)
:)
On one of my (VERY NON PRODUCTION!!! Its just a home/test server that I dont update much anymore...) is still running one of the more stable 2.1 devel kernels... and it has not been down a single time after I upgraded,.. mind you this was also when I moved the server from 2.0... I was propairing for the changes that would need to take place when I would need to I migrate my other stuff (more production stuff) to the actuall 2.2 release..
still kickin
BTW, on THIS machine I allways have the lastest devel kernel (and lack of devel kernel I have the latest stable).. But I guess its my nature,.. I love bleading edge over leading edge.. because bleading edge you tend to lose a little blood now and then and things get a little exciting
Anyhow Im tired, Ive gone WAY beond the point of this email into rambles,.. I hope the point was understood hahaha
- wait_queue changes: affect mutexes,semaphores,locks, etc.
- also a reworking of spinlock architecture.
- Netwinder support (and misc ARM updates)
- Framebuffer updates (ARM, VGA)
- an ADFS filesystem bugfix?
- ext2fs updates for better NFS support? (seems to involve mostly field renaming at this point)
- a one-line fix for quake protocol masquerading.
That's it, folks. Nothing earth-shaking yet, although the wait_queue reworking touches quite a lot of code.might be running ruptimed
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
What's to say that 2.3.0 isnt just 2.2.8 but set aside to play with new things in the kernel?
anyone know how close 2.2.8 and 2.3.0 are?
-xyster
How do you get uptimes of other linux boxes?
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Perhaps major, _important_ kernel updates could (should?) still be announced, though.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I really am posting this to deter people (especially "newbies") from following the 2.3.x series. MOST of us will not find following the devel series to be of any use. The devel series can be very unstable and chaotic. For example, with 2.1.44, file system corruption was possible. The only people I see with a need to follow this are kernel developers, those people whose only hope for hardware support in the new kernel, and, of course, the thrillseekers and bleeding-edgers.
But, to reiterate, MOST of us do not want to following the devel kernel.
That's the point of pre-patches for stable kernels. The point of pre-patches for dev kernels seems to be slightly different. They're more to get the code out to the people who might be interested so they can smack it around and get it mostly working so that the release development kernels stand a good chance of at least compiling and probably even running. Dev kernels are basically pre-patches for the next stable kernel series, anyway, so their pre-patches are really pre-patches for pre-patches, with a corresponding decrease in expected reliability...
What, you mean like the little slashbox that shows the latest stable and devel kernel numbers? (It's called "Linux HQ Kernel Versions" or something like that.)
:) People who don't want to read the articles can just skip over 'em. It's not hard; I do it all the time with articles I'm not interested in.
You can also finger @linux.kernel.org, and get the same information with less propagation delay.
I like having the posts on Slashdot, though, because, although I usually finger kernel.org at least once a day, especially when I get the feeling that a new kernel release is imminent, there's only been about three times where I found out about it before it was posted on Slashdot. And, given that I do all my kernel testing on a 386-40, I need all the lead time I can get...
And, regardless, I think the opening of the 2.3 development series qualifies as a major, important kernel update. The patch itself may not consist of more than a version number change, but it's the equivalent of Linus firing the starting gun for the race to get all those cool new features implemented. It's also a signal that the developers think that 2.2 is really solid and stable now, and the main development effort can be concentrated on adding new features for the next stable release.
This post was intended to be a mildly sarcastic one-liner, and it seems to have gotten a little out of hand, so I'll shut up now...
I've got one machine running 2.3.0 now, and two more that I'm planning on having on 2.2.8 before the day is up. The difference between them is that the 2.3.0 machine is my guinea pig box, and it's going to be upgraded to 2.3.1 when it comes out and follow the dev tree. The 2.2.8 machines will be upgraded to 2.2.9 and stay on the stable tree until 2.4/3.0, whichever comes first. Yeah, the only difference is the version number, but having the wrong version number will make a difference when it comes to getting the next patch applied cleanly.
And the guy who started this has done the rest of us a favor by installing 2.3.0. He found a bug (or maybe it's just a misfeature) where the version number change causes certain modules not to work. Would you rather he'd stuck with 2.2.8 and the bug had gone undiscovered until he installed 2.4.0 a year down the road, expecting something with all the bugs worked out, and discovered that his sound didn't work?
Yeah, I know, I'm sure someone else would have discovered something that blatant long before 2.4 made it out the door, but the point remains... people using dev kernels is what makes the bazaar model of development work. "Release early, release often," doesn't do much if only a select few are actually _using_ those releases.
If you want cathedral-development free-source Unix, you know where to find *BSD...
Posted by Nericus:
:) Just like I've no doubt if MacOS released a new version it'd be up here, and when/if MS releases a new version, it'll be posted....Linux just releases a shitload of new versions. :)
Yes, perhaps there are better things to report on, but that also means there are better things to comment on ya putz.
well, look at the 2.1 series -- it got to 2.1.132 before 2.2 came out.. because there were typically about 3 pre-patches for each release, we would've had to deal with kernel versions up around 2.1.400 or so. :^)
that leads to another reason: each final (non-pre-patch) version that is released has a massive archive, and a patch for it. could you imagine if there were 400 10+ MB tarballs, as well as all of the patches? that would be insane..
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Witness (most likely) the only time in Linux's history when the kernel patch is smaller than the PGP signature made for it!
:^)
patch-2.2.8-to-2.3.0.gz = 268 bytes
patch-2.2.8-to-2.3.0.gz.sign = 344 bytes
I know, the patch is compressed -- but who cares, right?
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Seriously, live with it.
There are an immense number of sites dealing with such boring trivia as a new ethernet card and web
software from the NT perspective. There is simply no value in slashdot repeating these stories.
They are neither news, nor interesting to any but a small section of the current readership. In fact
the idea of an NT only ethernet adapter makes me ill just with a mention.
Slashdot, of the readers, for the readers. You feel like a minority here? good, that's the feeling
I get whenever I walk into a newsagent.
The only difference between 2.2.8 and 2.3.0 is what will happen to the 2 trees in the future.
2.2.x is a stable series - Only bug fixes wil happen.
2.3.x is experimental - new features will start to appear.
This is how it's always been...
Surprise, OSS sucks.
Alsa rocks, I was afraid of it for a long time, but it's a lot easier than OSS.
The only difference is the version number :
-PATCHLEVEL = 2
-SUBLEVEL = 8
+PATCHLEVEL = 3
+SUBLEVEL = 0
Hopefully lots of interesting new stuff will come out in 2.3.1.
Threads aren't the only way of getting better SMP performance; full-fledged processes work just as well in most cases (except where latency really is the overriding issue), and it's an easier programming model.
For that matter, a machine running multiple jobs simultaneously will take advantage of multiple CPU's. Unfortunately, all the benchmarks (even server benchmarks) seem oriented toward single-tasking desktop platforms.
The job mix is the key!
My 2.2.8 kernel crashes after less than 5 minutes up. Looks like when Alan hacked the Cyrix code he broke 5 other subsystems.
Freshmeat is full of insignificant updates to insignificant packages I don't care about. I want news about advances in the most significant free software projects, like Linux, gcc, apache and KDE. Stuff that matters.
Freshmeat is nice, I use it as a database when searching for something specific, but not as a general source of news for nerds.
I don't see how a new topic (which you could unselect) could fail to solve your problem, which appear to be that you get the news twice, once from slashdot and once from freshmeat.
And, don't mention moderators in a topic which doesn't involve them, you know, it's offtopic. So, the "fuck moderators" are not being moderated out of existence because it offends moderators, but because it's totally off-topic, and adds nothing to the discussion (i.e. everyone knows there are people who hate being moderated at all, repeating it five times in each topic is something noone cares about.)
OTOH, I don't know who and why moderated down the 'fun begins' post, it's perfectly describing how a kernel addict feels about opening the 2.3 tree...
"Ten years from now, they could do it in a few seconds." -- The Racketeer of the Hellfire Club, 1993, Phrack 42
So, unless you REALLY enjoy 20 megabyte downlaods and the screams of other slashdotters, who you've robbed all that bandwidth from, it makes a LOT of sense to go to 2.3.0 if you want to play with the technology under development.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Myself, I'm waiting until at least 2.3.8, or until my hands start shaking uncontrollably from the lack of fresh kernel.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I've had it crash numerous times before 2.2.8.
Hmm. I don't recall NT Service packs being announced here...
Right now we have one other option -- all graphical applications are run as superuser. To me, chmod +s XF86_* == bad, chmod +s random_svgalib_program == bad. If you think putting graphics drivers into the kernel is unstable, you have obviously never used SVGAlib. And besides, with all this FBcon hooplah going into the kernel, it would make sense to just use KGI, which accomplishes the same thing (repeating work == bad).
Hey if putting graphics in the kernel is bad, why stop there? Maybe we should take sound support out of the kernel, and text-mode support, network device support, and mouse and keyboard support. Having these drivers in the kernel should reduce stability, right?
Check out the Linux wishlist. AFAIK, this is kind of a compilation of stuff taken from various Linux newsgroups and mailing lists about features people would like. Note that some of the things listed have already been implemented, and most things listed won't be implemented in the near future (i.e. 2.3) if at all.
Then we'd end up filtering out about %10 of the posts to slashdot. I agree with the original poster, of the ~10 articles a day posted, I don't want one, no less two, to be wasted by new kernel releases. That's what we have Freshmeat for.
I'd consider using the Slash code to set up a competing site, but I'm not very good at running a project. But if anyone else would bother to pick up the ball, I'd help you run with it by submitting stories and such.
If only Rob would get around to releasing Slash 0.3... Maybe this very thing is the reason he hasn't?
Alan is up to something like 2.0.38pre17 now... 2.0.38 will probably be close to the end for the 2.0 series after this, as things seem to go. Let's hope this one turns out to be as stable as I hear 1.2.13 is (I jumped into Linux at 2.0.30 myself...)
Erm... you meant "finger @linux.kernel.org".
( Sorry to nit-pick... )
/* MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
MADMEN ONLY */
...it provides this information in a small package. I'm still glad that the 2.3 announcement made slashdot, though.
--Lenny
//"You can't prove anything about a program written in C or FORTRAN.
It's really just Peek and Poke with some syntactic sugar."
Some people have mentioned that Dev kernels should not be announced here because we shouldn't be encouraging newbies to download/use them. It's true: the people who would really care about the Dev kernels will find that information elsewhere. So I don't think that 2.3.1 or higher should be announced here on Slashdot.
However, I find it very newsworthy that the 2.3 series was *started*. This is something that I have been awaiting eagerly. I wish that a list of proposed features had been posted as well, but I'm not even sure if such a document exists.
Perhaps NFS is a priority? Maybe some more SMP work? I can't wait to see...
--Lenny
//"You can't prove anything about a program written in C or FORTRAN.
It's really just Peek and Poke with some syntactic sugar."
From my mirror ( ftp://ftp1.us.kernel.org/pub/linux/: := $(shell uname -m | sed -e s/i.86/i386/ -e s/sun4u/sparc64/ -e s/arm.*/arm/ -e s/sa110/arm/)
v2.3$ zcat patch-2.2.8-to-2.3.0.gz
diff -u --recursive --new-file v2.2.8/linux/Makefile linux/Makefile
--- v2.2.8/linux/Makefile Tue May 11 13:10:27 1999
+++ linux/Makefile Tue May 11 13:03:06 1999
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
VERSION = 2
-PATCHLEVEL = 2
-SUBLEVEL = 8
+PATCHLEVEL = 3
+SUBLEVEL = 0
EXTRAVERSION =
ARCH
--
Starting development on the 2.3.x kernel marks a new era. Linux is here, now people want to see where it will go. Will SMP get major attention as some have already suggested? Will distributions like Red Hat make major money off OSS or will they destroy it? Will games make inroads into Linux as it matures?
We'll see.
In fact, we'll make it happen.
Bleh!
As some people have already noticed, I yesterday released 2.2.8, and in
the same breath made a 2.3.x release tree (where 2.3.0 is exactly the same
as 2.2.8 except the numbers have changed - making it easier to synchronize
the two in the beginning).
Most of 2.2.8 by far is just architecture updates: arm, ppc and m68k stand
out as having been pretty much synchronized to their respective devel
trees, but there are some fixes to alpha and x86 too.
The one major fix in 2.2.8 is the SMP fix for disable_irq(), courtesy of
Andrea Arcangeli (I disagreed in details and did it differently in the
end, but all the heavy lifting was done by Andrea). This is the thing that
caused silenth deaths for some people with certain network adapters (3c509
and 8390-based cards in particular: the latter covers ne2000 clones which
are fairly common).
There are lots of smaller things (driver updates, filesystem cleanups and
some networking fixes), but the SMP irq thing is the one to kill for if
you happened to have any of the affected cards.
As to 2.3.x, we're beginning with a long overdue waitqueue cleanup, which
means that a lot of small details need to get fixed in a variety of files.
A working pre-patch of this is to be found as pre-patch-2.3.1-3, but not
all drivers have been fixed - and help is appreciated (even drivers that
_have_ been fixed have not necessarily actually been tested due to lack of
hardware).
Linus
"Think of it as evolution in action."
date: 12:42am
uptime: 2:04, 2 users, load average: 1.87, 1.56, 1.38
processes: 112
I remember the uptimes this morning being at five days. I was having trouble getting on this evening too, so I checked. Was he upgrading kernels maybe?
support gun control: take guns from cops
I use FreeBSD and Linux at work, Linux at home. For a server OS where upgrades can break existing code, then FreeBSD makes sense. Linux as a workstation OS is nirvana - utter perfection for the technically competent. However, the upgrade path for FreeBSD is *far* rockier than Linux. With Linux, I only ever had problems going from libc5 to libc6 (aka glibc2). I was lucky enough to miss out on the a.out to ELF fun. But going from FreeBSD 2.1.x to 2.2.x or even worse, 3.x ... no thanks. Most sysadmins who *know* what they're talking about (and aren't just FreeBSD bigots), will agree that FreeBSD has more than its share of upgrade nightmares.
Chris Wareham
the variables probably need to be marked 'volatile' to keep the compiler from optimizing them away.
DNA just wants to be free...
The excellence of a kernel's use of multiple processors is measured by a lot more than simply the number of processors that can be utilized.
Well, according to 'finger @ftp.kernel.org' there is already a 2.3.1-pre1 patch... Perhaps it has more dangerous changes than the 2.3.0 one. ;)
totally off topic, i personally would revise your
.sig...
I consider MS-DOS to be the bad and WinNT to be the ugly....
2cents
---- I like compilers
...or you could ignore the discussion.
I use a few different operating systems throughout the day, and I'm sure I'm not alone. I appreciate the fact that quite a bit of what I am interested in in the computing world is consolidated here. Stop being so grumpy.
-somnambule
They're refering to kernels 2.2.8 vs 2.3.0
2.2.x are stable kernels while 2.3.y are experimental (where new untested features are added).
Development of the 2.3.y series will go in in parallell with bugfixes in the 2.2.x series.
Bring it on. I know that you don't need the kernal patched anymore to use it. But from what I understand, KGIcon works better when it is. I hope that future distos will include it.
WAKE UP RedHat...
#=-weo-=#
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
You may be right, the term obnoxious might
have been more appropriate, but then I do
find fundies obnoxious too.
I get very annoyed when some morons come and
tell us that we shouldn't use such and such
kernel. If we decide to take risks on our system
this is our own darn business.
We see that much too often on newsgroups,
whenever someone asks a question about an odd
numbered kernel there is someone to tell him that
he shouldn't be using it, like if it was his
business!
I had to rush to install the new kernel. It ...
works great but
OSS Sound flatly refuses to install because
it only supports up to version 2.2.99
What the hell for?
I had to downgrade to the old kernel to get
my sound back, kernel 2.2.8 that is.
One for stable kernel releases and one for unstable releases. Any maybe the unstable release announcements could be filtered out by default?
--Rob
Use the LinuxHQ slashbox. It's exactly what you're talking about.
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery
Makes sense, right? Right? Okay, maybe not.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
It is certainly simple when explained, but I think the typical consumer is too impatient to listen. I mea, the first thing I thought when I heard "2.3 out" was that it would be a new release version with fabulous features because of the bump in the second number. I had momentarily forgotten that it was an odd numbered, and therefore development, kernel. And I read Slashdot every day, so I'm probably better informed than the average Linux user.
I think it would be a good idea to put "stable" or "development" in the kernel file name so that its status would be obvious by just looking at the directory listing. That might prevent a bunch of "accidents".
D
----
So what if said actions lead to the demise of the individuals system. Its survival of the fittest. I wholeheartedly agree. An individuals rights to mess up and ruin any aspect of their life is unalienable. We should neither encourage nor discourage as maybe the next uber-hacker is just one confidence boost away.
And if BSD has kernel upgrades..they're posted here. If MacOS has kernel upgrades..they're posted here. If, don't hold your breath, Windows ever release 2000, it *will* be posted here.
Stop getting your panties in a bunch.
If you don't know what to fix until your competition tells you, you've got more problems than you know about. Ditto if you think SMP is the only thing that needs work.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I've no doubt if MacOS released a new version it'd be up here [...]
Ummm, you mean like Mac OS 8.6 that Apple released yesterday?? I must've missed that particular Slashdot thread...
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
does not lie within the kernel so much as withing the apps. Look at the ZD tests... they consistently complain that there are very few apps that use threading, so the multiple cpus are actually getting used. The kernel handles threads fairly well, but until apps start handing the kernel threads to be spread among the processors, it doesn't matter how efficient the kernel is.
He said, "You'll be able to tell your grandchildren that you helped assemble the first NT supercomputer," and I cringed.
Sux i guess, did you send in reports?
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
Woah, MP3 Fanatic =)
Hey, you actually OWN all those songs right? =P~
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
The release of 2.3.0 is news. There are a ton of new features that have been on hold while 2.2 was being prepared.
The release of kernel 2.3.x for arbitrary values of x are not news.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I thought the whole point of pre-patches was to test out patches for the next version to make sure it is stable. With a development kernel, it's not supposed to be stable, so what's the point of a pre-patch? Shouldn't it just be 2.3.1? So what if there's a new version every other day? That worked just fine for 1.3.x.
linux/kernel/testing/pre-patch-2.3.1-1.gz is out.
If you don't even know how to deal with such a simple conflict in a patch... The only reason to change to 2.3.0 is the kewl feeling that a version number of 2.3.* gives. But I think I'll wait for 2.3.1.
Only the version number has changed from 2.2.8 to 2.3.0.
-----
kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling).
kernel: lp0 off-line
kernel: lp0 out of paper
--
perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
I get very annoyed when some morons come and tell us that we shouldn't use such and such kernel. If we decide to take risks on our system this is our own darn business.
:P I really don't think the "don't touch new kernel!" warning was targeted at you. I thought what he said was entirely appropriate. With the recent influx of newbies (myself included...wheeee!) into the Linux fold, cluelessness is at an all-time high. I'm sure there are people out there running Linux that don't know that the x.odd.x kernels are dev and the x.even.x ones are production. So they would just upgrade, thinking "higher is better," then their systems would be screwed, they'd blame Linux, and go mewling back to Microsloth.
Oh, get your undies out of a bind.
Yeah, yeah, bring on the arguments about "then they're stupid, and deserve it, blah blah blah." To those that would argue that, I recommend you get out of your basement and realize that the days of a hacker-only Linux are fading fast. So you can accept it, and get on with life, or shake your tiny fists and rant about how guys with big wieners only use a CLI with no mouse, preferably over a network connection for the added "no directly attached monitor" ego boost.
Phooey, sez I. Linux is a beautiful bit of software, and to try to deny anyone the right/ability to use it seems tragic to me.
--
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
Microsoft's clustering software for NT is called W olfpack, though it can only cluster two servers together.
cpeterso
DO NOT stop posting stuff like this.
If I want to read about stuff I can buy in the Sharper Image I read Wired, or hell, I read the Sharper Image.
Fingering ftp.kernel.org also says the current beta is 2.3.0
QuMa
Yeah.. You don't know these people on the net now adays..
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Wow one person got it! *claps* I think I should know my kernel version, even thou i'm not be the the linux guru like most people one here, but I do know some!
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Many times when developers refer to stable/unstable they mean the specification to the interface. So in saying that 2.3.0 is stable because it is based on the stable 2.2.8 is ignorant of the terminology. 2.3.0 is unstable because the interface is scheduled to change.
Actually, if my memory serves, a new stable series is chosen not only when the codebase is getting stable(r) but also when certain features make it in. As i recall, the 2.2-pre kernels came out when Linus said 'Ok, that's enough' and put a feature freeze down, working on bugs instead of adding stuff.
Just food for thought.
Installing a new kernel is not some guilty pleasure. He was advocating that people install the development kernel only with caution and forethought. It would not, therefore, be hypocritical of him to install the development kernel with caution and forethought.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
I wouldn't say that people are interested in the version number. They are intrerested in the fact that development of the kernel finally can begin again.
Richard
Accually.. I don't think so.. I could be MAJORLY wrong but I do believe the kernal is accually linus' baby the GNU thing is because a whole LOT of GNU developmental tools and other stuff is included in every linux based distrubution. Though I could be SERIOULSY wrong.. someone correct me if this is the case
How about a new category: "Linux Kernel Releases", so we can disable it in our User Prefs, if we're not interested?
Is the new development kernel going to use BitKeeper or some other similar source management system?
I've been wondering on this for a long time now , I heard Linus at least some of the other kernel developers were interested, what's the current status of such a move?
--- C0sm1c
what would you call windows 2000
Okay, I'll rise to this...
AIUI, if a story has been posted on the slashdot front page, or as an Ask Slashdot, then that story is deemed to be on-topic, purely by way of it actually making the front page. If a post then comes along saying the story is off topic (despite being on the stories page), that comment itself becomes offtopic, and IMHO, a moderator is perfectly within their remit to moderate it down. I would go as far to say that I would expect a moderator to mark it down.
As has been said previously, if you don't like the Linux stories, just take them out of your stories I want to see list (you *do* have a user login, right?).
FWIW, I expect slashdot to continue to post this sort of thing, purely because it *is* news. And for balance, I do like to see news about other OS releases/bugfixes/service packs - even though I only use Linux. Working in the IT industry, I know I have to keep myself up to date with *all* things IT, not just the stuff I want to hear about.
Normal service will now be resumed...
Caffeine fault: operator dumped
Multiple processes is the way to go much of the time, but threads have an advantage when it comes to multitasking within a process. Threads make it easy to share data structures, and there is less overhead in creating a thread than in creating a process (a process needs a copy of the environment, a thread just shares an existing one). Of course there are other differences which I won't go into.
However, it would be quite correct to say that the problem with threading isn't the kernel, its the applications. Most applications just aren't written to use multiple threads *or* multiple processes, but thats not the kernels fault, but the applications. Most developers just don't want to deal with synchronization issues and stick with a sequential design model.
The real work that needs to be done in the kernel as far as SMP is concerned is scalability. The 2.2.x kernels do well up to four CPU's (judging from what I've heard, I only run two myself), but don't scale well beyond that. Contrast this with Solaris, which scales well to 64 CPU's. And I think Irix does as well or better than Solaris. If Linux wants to compete on high end machines, it will need to scale well with as many CPU's as possible without hurting single-CPU performance.
The current Linux solution is to use several midsize computers in a cluster instead of one large computer. This model has its merits, but there are problems as well. For example, Beowulf doesn't have fault tolerence. And there are a lot of people who want to use Linux on a single high-end system. (And I would just love to see what Linux could do with a Beowulf cluster of machines with 64 CPU's!)
Lets not forget that most recent benchmarks comparing Linux to other OS's use high end machines. Many people see that as a bias toward other OS's because it is comparing their strengths with Linux's weakness's, which may be true. But it also points out a valid weakness in Linux. Hopefully the 2.3 kernels will start investigating better use of high-end hardware (not only SMP, but also things like RAID support).
Why don't you read the Cathedral and the Bazaar and get some insight?
It's suppose to be this way, and nobody forces you to upgrade so why should you ?
De lyckliga slavarna är frihetens bittraste fiender, legalisera!!!
What we need is a way to filter out news about kernel upgrades; everybody happy then?
De lyckliga slavarna är frihetens bittraste fiender, legalisera!!!
I was also going to make a silly comment about this being the first major site running 2.3.* for production. But it looks more like DNS problems. Hard to read with half the stuff blank.
Hey watch who you're callin stupid!
(excuse me, your balls are showing) -Ace Ventura
BumbleBee Tuna!
I am a man of god, the female body is a temple for the procreation of the human race... got a dollar?
(ok, I'll stop..)
Um, read Robs post at the top
Uh, that's why if you register you can filter out any category you want. Check it out sometime, it really makes it better (I filter out *BSD stories, but that's just my preference)
Just untick the box containing kernel updates.
Okay, what's up with the score on this comment? -2 just doesn't seem to fall in the magic range of -1 to 5....
Anyone have an idea what is on the todo list for the 2.3.x series and eventually 2.4?
The only difference is the version number.
I really don't understand people that just rush into things like this without investigating first. As many people have already said, running diff shows that the only difference between the 2.2.8 and 2.3.0 is the VERSION NUMBER! In essence, 2.3.0 is a snapshot of the 2.2.X series that provides the starting point for a developmental 2.3.X series. When a stable point is eventually reached, it will then be copied over to a new stable 2.4.X series.
If you wanted the latest kernel, you should have just installed 2.2.8 and saved yourself a little trouble.
-- UOZaphod
"The unicode stuff in the latest version is working fabulously well. My russian mafia friends are ecstatic."
In fact, the 2.3.X series is a development series. It is really intended to be used to test new additions to the kernel so that eventually a new 2.4.0 stable kernel can be released, which may be a ways down the road yet (remember the amount of time from 2.0.X to 2.2.X?)
I would discourage people from upgrading to the 2.3.X series until it has reached a stable point.
-- UOZaphod
"The unicode stuff in the latest version is working fabulously well. My russian mafia friends are ecstatic."
2.0.X - stable series
2.1.X - development series
2.2.X - stable series
2.3.X - development series
2.4.X (future) - stable series
It is very simple to understand. 2.3.0 is a snapshot of 2.2.8. The purpose is to provide a starting point for a kernel development series.
A development series is used to test more drastic changes to the kernel (ones which would never be accepted into a stable series). In fact, the only changes usually accepted into a stable series are bug fixes.
When a development series reaches a stable condition, a snapshot is taken to begin a new even numbered series (i.e. 2.4.X).
I hope that clears things up for people.
-- UOZaphod
"The unicode stuff in the latest version is working fabulously well. My russian mafia friends are ecstatic."
What do you think about having Tempest, or Centipede in the data center?
sed s/mp3/pr0n/
Hey now, I'm only kidding! :-)
% mp3sum
1,960 mp3 files; 14,067,515,576 bytes worth of mp3s (~7,177,303 bytes/file)
%
After the Mindcraft and ZD tests, I have a feeling that SMP is going to get most of the attention for a while. M$ really blew it when they pointed out that Linux needed more work in this area. By the time the W2k bug is released Linux should be close to (If not ahead of) NT in SMP.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
you kow, there ist this cool attitude on having a development kernel running on your machine :-)
even if it's nearly the same version as the stable one you can't deny our community this coolness factor - that's how the kernel became what it is (and, of course, because there are some guys out there who fix the bugs)
-- all those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain.
They are focusing on a lot of things for the kernel right now and they have just shifted more of it towards the SMP after the fiasco called Mindcraft.
RB
---
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
I've seen far more Alpha's loaded with NT or VMS than Tru64...
umm..no.
I never see OS/2 fixpack releases posted here, for example.
then get off your lazy ass and send emails to the people who are responsible for posting messages on slashdot!!! dont bitch and whine to us perfectly happy :) :) :) and enthusiastic!!!! and excited!!! linux users/slashdot readers! you do know how this entire website works dont you? you find something kool then message in...
> ERROR: IEXPLORE caused an invalid page fault in module MSCONV97.DLL at 0137:01212d19. Stack dumped:
Is this the first time that /. has noticed the odd numbered development versions? It's not a new version, it's the starting place for the development varsions.
-NG
+--
Given infinite time, 100 monkeys could type out the complete works of Shakespeare.
+-- (Score:-1, Moderator on Power Trip)
Someday you moderator types are going to stop fearing me, stop loathing me, (and, most importantly, stop thinking I equate Linux with GNU!), and start seeing me as the ever-lovable gnulix guy -- all about parody and not about politics!
...signed, the ever-lovable gnulix guy!
I recently stumbled upon a tech newsletter put out by an engineer at Compaq. It is called The Rapidly Changing Face of Computing. Enjoy.