The 2.6 test series begins

On July 13, Linus began the 2.6.0-test series of development kernels. The move to the -test naming scheme indicates that the 2.5 development period is truly done, and that the focus is now strongly on stabilization. To that end, the -test1 release restricted itself to fixes and updates - except for the addition of Andries Brouwer's cryptoloop driver.

This sort of announcement usually results in a flurry of "but X hasn't been merged yet" postings. Things are much quieter this time around. It would seem that, for the most part, the features that the developers want to see in the kernel are mostly in place. There are a few remaining loose ends, however:

• The expanded dev_t type. Most of the ground work has been done, but the size of dev_t has not yet been changed in Linus's tree. It is widely expected that this work will be completed before 2.6.0 goes out.

• Power management still needs some work. Much of that work has been done, but it has not yet been packaged up and submitted to Linus.

• The NSA SELinux security module is being proposed for inclusion. Linus has not made his feelings known on this patch, but, since it does not affect anything outside of the module itself, adding SELinux should be relatively easy to justify. Andrew Morton has indicated that SELinux will show up in his -mm tree shortly.

• Support for many (or most) non-x86 architectures is not current in the mainline kernel. This is a pretty standard state of affairs; the official 2.6.0 kernel will certainly lack functioning support for several architectures.

• There is some continuing unease over the state of the 2.5 scheduler, which shows problems with certain kinds of loads.

In the past, Linus has not always been successful in making this kind of freeze stick. This time around, however, Andrew Morton will be involved in the stabilization process. Since Andrew will also be maintaining the resulting 2.6 kernel, he'll have a strong incentive to keep a lid on things during the test phase.

Now, of course, is the time for people with an interest in 2.6 to try out the -test releases. Before trying out a 2.6-test kernel for the first time, however, a reading of Dave Jones's "what to expect" document is highly recommended (Joe Pranevich's Wonderful World of Linux 2.6 is also worth a look). Also note that putting a 2.6-test kernel on a production system is a risky thing to do; there are still known bugs and security issues to be dealt with.

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