The 2.6 version of the Linux core is expected in December and will be much more stable on arrival than its predecessor, according to the maintainer. Update: OSDL to detail development process of Linux.The Open Source Development Lab on Wednesday will announce a new initiative aimed to raise awareness about how the Linux kernel is developed.
Because 2.6 includes many of the customizations Linux sellers have used, the release of the new kernel will reduce the differences between those products and the standard version at Kernel.org. That’s significant, because Linux programmers are working to keep Linux from “forking” into incompatible versions, as happened with Unix.
becasue it would jsut make it so much better.
and if the stock kernel becomes the only thing used, then that means that making new kernels in distros like Mandrake and Suse and Fedora, who use many modification (more so in the 2.2 days amking it very hard to use stock images on those distros)
will be really easy.
what would be nice is a build utility that autodetects your hardware, configures it, then asks you the optional questions, then compiles it, installs it to the distro’s specs of how to do so (initrd or no initrd) and makes an entry. that will make upgrading the OS really powerful for normal users.
Ever since I used my GS790 ViewSonic monitor with my G3 B&W mac I can’t get Fedora Linux or RedHat to pick it up during the install process so I can re-install. In fact when I do boot into my Fedora system my screen just blanks out. Of course when I switch over to Windows 2000 via my KVM switch everything is back to normal. Anyone ecounter this problem before ? Could it be that my G3 fried out the pnp firmware in the monitor ? Funny thing is that this happens on both PC’s that I try to install Fedora or RedHat using this same monitor. Prior to me fooling around with this G3 Mac everything ran okay and my monitor was detected with no problems.
P.S. I noticed today that when I boot up the PC with Fedora on it and I am switched over to the W2K PC the monitor works with my Linux box again. Yet when I switch back to my Fedora box and I log out of Gnome or restart X I get ‘DPMS mode OFF’ on the monitor and it blanks out. Also when I do get an image it looks almost shakey somewhat but not extremely shakey. The monitor was detected and installed fine with Fedora Linux before I messed with this G3 box but now Fedora and Redhat’s installer ( they use the same one ) do not detect it at all. Any ideas or help as to what is wrong with this monitor would be appreciated, thanks.
I was actually expecting it next spring. Good news…
Hopefully I’ll be running Slackware by then and upgrading the kernel won’t be too much trouble (slack 9.1 is “2.6 ready”, according to slackware.com).
Anybody here running the 2.6.test9 or test10? Are there big increases in speed/responsiveness?
I used to run 2.6.0test2 on a PIII 600 : boy, the performance boost (especially with scheduler patches) made quite a difference !
I would run it on my new box, but I need nVidia’s proprietary drivers to work on 2.6. I tried the http://www.minion.de patches, but they don’t work with my Via-chipset-based motherboard … 😐
Has anyone got the drivers to work on Debian with a Via KT400 based motherboard (it’s an Asus A7V8X-X) ?
your description of the problem is a little hard to follow…
having eliminated the KVM from the equation (i.e. yank that crap off), are you telling us that you cannot see your computer post?
or are you saying that you can see it post, but as soon as you boot to a fedora/redhat 9 install cd that the screen goes blank right from the start?
or are you saying that the screen goes blank after the installer cd goes through the initial detection?
if it’s the last one…then there is options to have the installer go through text mode or base vga mode.
at the end hand pick your monitor, or one similar to it.
end of story.
” or are you saying that the screen goes blank after the installer cd goes through the initial detection? ”
I does post fine but once X starts up it blanks out and gives me that ‘dpms mode off’ crap. I tried with and without the KVM switch and on both PC’s it gives me the same problems. Even when I try to re-install Fedora it does not detect the monitor. Yet before I fiddled with the G3 B&W mac not only did Fedora detect it during the install it installed it correctly. Now I can’t get Fedora to install with the monitor becuase it blanks out. I think somehow I fried the pnp chip on-board the monitor when I was playing around with OS-X Panther and resolutions on that G3 Mac.
how old is the monitor? did you play around with the resolutions that were out of range?
I’ve been running it now on my dual MP1700+ system since 2.6.0-test8 came out. I definitely noticed a big kick in the system responsiveness. In addition it seems to support my radeon 8500 quite nicely and also this atheros 54MB wireless card. You just have to remember that you need to load a hardware specific agp module in addition to the agpgart.
It’s a ViewSonic GS790. I think I have had it for more then 3 years now. If you are refering to when I had it hooked to the Mac, yes I did accidently set it in a frequency for a res that was out of range.
well, that would be why. setting it out of range can damage the monitor.
I don’t know why it works on the Mac and Win2k box and not the FC box, unless Win2k and Mac OS X both ignore the PnP code of the monitor so that it does not effect them.
Thanks for the help I kind of thought that might be the reason. I just said F-it and ordered a new 19 inch monitor. This monitor will serve as a backup I guess.
I’m running 2.6 test9 mm5, and it has a much nicer and more fluid/consistant feel to it, especially with X environments, audio, and video. As for speed? I still get about the same FPS and compile times.
I used to run 2.6.0test2 on a PIII 600 : boy, the performance boost (especially with scheduler patches) made quite a difference !
I would run it on my new box, but I need nVidia’s proprietary drivers to work on 2.6. I tried the http://www.minion.de patches, but they don’t work with my Via-chipset-based motherboard … 😐
Has anyone got the drivers to work on Debian with a Via KT400 based motherboard (it’s an Asus A7V8X-X) ?
Well I use the A7V8X-X motherboard with an Athlon 2400+, an NVidia GeForce FX 5200 card with Test10 and NVidia’s patched version an it runs OK!
Are you sure you haven’t misconfigure X?
2.6-test10 works well in slackware 9.1, slack is 2.6 ready
It’s little bit faster in desktop environment. I can’t wait 2.6.0
Might be good christmas present to all linux users in world!
I heard that test versions already do hibernation (suspend to disk) for laptops. Which is great.
I’ve run into problems with the patched driver but then dropped the ISA/EISA support from the kernel and X just run fine after that (with the patched drivers)…
Anyway, it feels a lot more responsive than the 2.4 series.
But, IMHO, a lot of desktop irresposiveness has to do with bad practice in toolkit programming(Things like programs using huge amounts of memory just do do double buffer rendering)
Quoting Keith Packard and Jim Gettys:
“one idea we’ve toyed with is to encourage most applications to use 16bit deep windows as much as possible. This might often save memory over the current situation where windows are typically the depth of the screen (32 bits). The equation is complex, and not all for or against either the existing or new approach.” Jim
“But, with machine performance now permitting serious eye-candy, the window system has not expanded to link application requirements with graphics card capabilities. This has left X looking dated and shabby as applications either restrict themselves to the capabilities of the core protocol or work around these limitations by performing more and more rendering with the CPU in the application’s address space.” Keith
Again, Jim
But current Qt and GTK, and Mozilla toolkits need some serious tuning independent of the X server implementation. See our USENIX paper found http://keithp.com/~keithp/talks/usenix2003/. Some of the worst problems have been fixed since this work was done last spring, but there is much more to do.
Just my 2 (€) cents.
I’ll be waiting 4
2.6.1/2
I’m running 2.6.0-test10 with the NVidia drivers, works fine.
Overall responsiveness is good, about as good as 2.4.22-ck2 so if you can’t get 2.6 to work get the ck patchset (kernel.colivas.net) for 2.4. But i’ve encountered some slowdown on kernel 2.6, the nvidia drivers are as fast as before on OpenGL, but painting big areas (like the root window) is very slow, as if agp wasn’t used (it is used, i checked the log). Anyone else seeing this?
Am I the only one in the world who hasn’t noticed any performance gain at all after upgrading to a 2.6-pre kernel? I’ve been running 2.6 since pre4, and so far it hasn’t made my system noticably more responsive. Did I miss some big “Make my computer faster” checkbox in the kernel config or am i just unlucky?
Am I the only one in the world who hasn’t noticed any performance gain at all after upgrading to a 2.6-pre kernel?
Well, I guess it depends.
Do you have a blazingly fast computer? Do you use a light DE/WM like Fluxbox or XFce?
Maybe everything was already pretty instantaneous (and it’s hard to go faster than that
…
it also depends what you were running before upgrading to 2.6. I think there’s not so much noticable difference between a heavily patched 2.4 and 2.6, but switching from vanilla 2.4 to vanilla 2.6 sure makes a difference. (one can imagine that patched 2.6 kernels will run even faster than vanilla 2.6, just like we have now with 2.4 and all the interactivity patches)
It also depends on your definition of pre4.
Am I the only one who finds a december release just a little bit optimistic when there is a bug in -test10 with CONFIG_PREEMPT. According to Linus it results in memory corruption (se his announce of 2.6.0-test10).
I haven’t checked if it has been fixed withing the last ~24 hours, but I for one don’t see a 2.6.0 relase with a possibility of memory corruption as a good idea.
I know you can just switch of pre-emption, but most people will turn it on to improve interactivity (whatever that means, try openbox instead).
I have the pre-emption feature compiled into the test-10 kernel and I’m yet to witness the bug.
Just MHO, but I get really tired of hearing these guys say, oh I’ll wait for 2.6.1 or 2.6.choose your comfort level number. Please get real. According to Andrew Morton, the stability of 2.6test10 is roughly equivalent to where 2.4.17 is was at on the 2.4 tree. Thats pretty damn stable. Especially when you consider the technology leaps made in 2.6. Ive still got 2.6test5 on my Gentoo server at home. Its running tons of services, has been up for months straight, and has never crashed. Same goes for another Gentoo desktop. Zero crashes. If youve tried various flavors of 2.6 and ran into problems, then report the problems to the maintainers and come in here and post about how you’ll wait til 2.6.1+. Otherwise keep your whining to yourself. This topic is about the imminent release of what is to be the biggest step forward for Linux…..lets try to stick to it.
I tried test9 out 2 weeks ago. To be honest, I prefer the old xconfig, but it’s not a big deal. However I had to stop using test9 because I couldn’t get the Nvidia drivers to build themselves. Has Nvidia said how soon they will release compatible drivers?
but I need nVidia’s proprietary drivers to work on 2.6
They do, just apply these patches:
http://www.minion.de/nvidia.html
Posted without fully reading his comment, that the minion patches don’t work. Tried the latest tests though?
I’m running 2.6 test 8 right now, and i’m happy with it…
BUT, i’ll wait for at least 2.6.1 to put it on my second pc…
This machine [2.6 test 8] is my test machine…
Slackware 9.1
The other one is my workstation… and i’m happy with the 2.4.22 there [for now]
2.6.1 usualy comes with major bugs fixes that were in test kernels but weren’t fixed and/or found
I have been running 2.6.0-test9 for the last month or so.
The main difference I can tell is that disk io does not seem to slow things down. I can be doing all sorts of things such as copying huge files and linking in the background and my desktop never stutters. I have no idea if the disk throughput is higher, but since I can use my desktop while it is working I don’t care. When I boot to 2.4 or xp on the same box it feels painful in comparison. I guess it is one of those psychology things (like going from a rotary phone to a touchtone) where delays that you had learned to live with drive you nuts once you have experienced what it is like without them.
There are major advances coming with ALSA in the 2.6 kernel but why has there been little focus on making video drivers simpler to install. Why can’t they just distribute the Nvidia/ATI binaries with the distros? Linux will be ready for the desktop IMO when I can install Linux and play Tux Racer at greater than 1 FPS without kernel tweaking and text file editing.
“Why can’t they just distribute the Nvidia/ATI binaries with the distros?”
Like it or not, the nvidia binary-only drivers are not licensed like the kernel, so they cannot be legally included – NVidia will not allow it. Take your complaints to Nvidia. I am dumbfounded that you would even ask such a question.
I’m not suggesting that the driver source be incuded in the kernel obviously, just that Suse, etc. would include the file(s) with a disclaimer that the drivers have a separate license. Why on earth would they prevent the distribution of something that can be downloaded free of charge from their website.
OT of course but I’ve been running 2.6 Test6 for a while with no problems at all.