Kernel release status [LWN.net]

The current 2.6 kernel is 2.6.6, which was announced by Linus on May 9. Changes since the last prepatch include an NTFS update, an XFS update, some small virtual memory patches, an ACPI update, various architecture updates, and lots of fixes. The list of changes since 2.6.5 is much more extensive, including POSIX message queues, significant ext2 and ext3 filesystem performance improvements, the "laptop mode" patch, 4KB stacks for the i386 architecture, non-executable stack support for several architectures, a big reiserfs update, the lightweight auditing framework, the "completely fair queueing" I/O scheduler, TCP "Vegas" congestion avoidance, and much more. The long-format changelog has the details.

As of this writing, no 2.6.7 prepatches have been released. Patches are accumulating in Linus's BitKeeper repository, however; they include a libata update, some architecture updates, the scheduling domains patch set (covered here last month), the removal of the Intermezzo filesystem due to lack of use and support, a sysctl variable giving "huge page" access to a administrator-specified group (see below), the ability to re-enable interrupts while waiting in spin_lock_irqsave() (for all architectures now), support in reiserfs for quotas and external attributes (added over Hans Reiser's objections), and lots of fixes.

The current prepatch from Andrew Morton is 2.6.6-mm1. Recent additions to -mm include backing store for sysfs (covered here last February), a number of patches for shrinking the heavily-used dentry structure, another set of (relatively small) virtual memory patches, ia64 hotplug CPU support, a generic qsort() function for the kernel, and the usual pile of fixes.

The current 2.4 kernel is 2.4.26; no 2.4.27 prepatches have been released since 2.4.27-pre2 came out on May 3.

(Log in to post comments)

2.7 fork?

Posted May 13, 2004 17:32 UTC (Thu) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link]

Any ideas if they're about ready to fork 2.7? Seems like it's about time. OTOH, since 2.6.6 was such a huge patch, they might want to give it a bit of time to stabilize before the fork.

I *really* hope they cut down on the huge patches soon. 2.6 is supposed to be *stable*! Seems like half the things mentioned should be 2.7 material.

2.7 fork?

Posted May 14, 2004 0:54 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

I *really* hope they cut down on the huge patches soon. 2.6 is supposed to be *stable*

I don't think anyone seriously believes 2.6 to be stable, but stabilizing would be nice. As Linus and others noted during 2.5 development, history has shown that people won't begin the testing necessary for stabilization until the even-numbered releases begin.

Of course, what we're seeing is 2.6 not even stabilizing. I have the distinct impression that developers are losing interest in the development/stabilizing system because it isn't working. The even numbered series are too far apart and people won't use the odd numbered ones.

If they really believed in the two stream system, 2.7 would have been created at the same moment as 2.6, and every change would have gone into 2.7 first, and then ported to 2.6 if it's not destabilizing. But that would require more effort from developers than what they're givng now.

Storage

Posted May 20, 2004 11:12 UTC (Thu) by yem (guest, #1138) [Link]

Hey when did IEEE1394 hotswapping start working? This is great! Plug or unplug my external hard drive and the SCSI device appears virtualling instantly - no need to run rescan-scsi-bus.sh. Would be nice to have this propagated back to 2.4.x if possible for those unable to upgrade.

Also, is there a definitive source that tracks the status of SATA support in Linux? It seems to be getting better and better but I still hear of people having trouble, especially at install time. PATA will die out before long (witness the HP servers that now only offer SATA or SCSI) and linux support needs to be rock solid - not "mostly ok".

* very pleased with 2.6.6 *

Storage

Posted May 25, 2004 4:42 UTC (Tue) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link]

Also, is there a definitive source that tracks the status of SATA support in Linux?

Jeff Garzik posts status reports every couple of weeks on linux-kernel. Subscribe, or browse the archives - it's not hard to find them by subject line. See for example http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0405.1/0425.html.