The 2.6.39 kernel is out

[Posted May 19, 2011 by corbet]

Linus has announced the availability of the 2.6.39 kernel, despite being unsure about whether making one more -rc release would have been the better course. "However, since I'm going to be at LinuxCon Japan in two weeks, the choice for me ended up whether I should just release, or drag it out *three* more weeks, or have some really messy merge window with a break in between." Prominent features in this release include IPset, the media controller subsystem, a couple of new network flow schedulers, the block plugging rework, the long-awaited removal of the big kernel lock, and more. Unfortunately, the KernelNewbies 2.6.39 page appears to be under construction as of this writing; more information on what's in this release can be found in the LWN merge window summaries: part 1, part 2, and part 3, or in Thorsten Leemhuis's summary on The H.

It's worth noting that, even though this was a relatively active development cycle in terms of the number of changes merged, it was, at 64 days, one of the shortest in recent times.

to post comments

The 2.6.39 kernel is out

Posted May 19, 2011 14:14 UTC (Thu) by bjartur (guest, #67801) [Link] (4 responses)

As nobody but Linus is able to release, his going to Japan forced him to release earlier then optimal? Well, there's surely a reason for enterprise distros to release their own kernels.

The 2.6.39 kernel is out

Posted May 19, 2011 15:08 UTC (Thu) by xxiao (guest, #9631) [Link] (1 responses)

I agree, Linus certainly needs a hot-swappable backup, or even a small core team. The stake is too high by a single point of failure.

The 2.6.39 kernel is out

Posted May 19, 2011 16:03 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

If you read the message, the event that's in two weeks is one that not only Linus will be at, but which would attract any plausible small team of kernel maintainers, as well as most of the people who would be sending in changes or testing them.

The 2.6.39 kernel is out

Posted May 19, 2011 15:56 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

There's the additional point that the kernel tree has bugs which are too risky to fix this close to a release, because the riskiness of a change to the part of the code they're in (resource allocation, where you have to worry about hitting BIOS quirks) is high and the amount of the testing cycle which remains is low. So in order to produce a 2.6.39.x that fixes these known issues, Linus has to open the 2.6.40 merge window, get the change, see if it causes problems when people test that, and have it in 2.6.39.x. This is the normal situation, of course, because there are always changes that are needed for the highest quality but need real-world testing out of the next development cycle. Enterprise distros (and any competent non-enterprise distro) would never use a Linus kernel as the standard non-testing kernel, therefore; they'd wait for a -stable kernel with the next cycle's verified fixes backported into it.

The 2.6.39 kernel is out

Posted May 20, 2011 7:18 UTC (Fri) by cate (subscriber, #1359) [Link]

IIRC Alan Cox was in charge to maintain some kernels in 2.1 epoch (Linus was off few months, IIRC). And anyway there is also a stable kernel team which could correct important bugs. Development could stop few months without much problem.

The 2.6.39 kernel is out

Posted May 19, 2011 15:07 UTC (Thu) by leifbk (guest, #35665) [Link] (14 responses)

Removal of the Big Kernel Lock unfortunately makes it impossible to install the current proprietary ATI driver. I hope this will be resolved soon.

The 2.6.39 kernel is out

Posted May 19, 2011 17:42 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] (13 responses)

.... by ATI, of course.

The 2.6.39 kernel is out

Posted May 19, 2011 20:40 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

I'm a happy user of ATI Gallium3D driver.

ATI HD 5770 works well out of the box on Fedora 15 Beta...

The 2.6.39 kernel is out

Posted May 19, 2011 21:32 UTC (Thu) by leifbk (guest, #35665) [Link] (11 responses)

Immediately after my last post, I had to leave for a meeting. Yes, of course, this most certainly is an ATI mess-up. The removal of the BKL shouldn't have come as a surprise to the ATI devs.

I'm on Gentoo, and I've been running unstable kernels and ATI drivers for a while. Trying to compile ati-drivers against 2.6.39, it just bombs out with this message:

 * Please enable the Big Kernel Lock:
 * Kernel hacking  --->
 *     [*] Big Kernel Lock
 * in the kernel config.
 * or add
 *     CONFIG_BKL=y
 * in /usr/src/linux/.config

I've been using ATI cards since 1989, and I'm sick and tired of it. After buying a laptop with NVidia that just works, I know what my next graphics card for the workstation will be. I'll probably order one tomorrow.

The 2.6.39 kernel is out

Posted May 19, 2011 21:39 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] (4 responses)

Personally I buy either Intel or ATI, always making sure that what I buy is supported by the open-source drivers. No NVidia for me.

The 2.6.39 kernel is out

Posted May 19, 2011 21:47 UTC (Thu) by leifbk (guest, #35665) [Link] (3 responses)

I don't want to turn this into a discussion about proprietary vs open-source drivers, but a driver that doesn't manage to play Flash videos in full-screen mode on a top-of-the-line card is broken in my opinion.

Obligatory

Posted May 20, 2011 1:15 UTC (Fri) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link] (1 responses)

> Flash videos in full-screen mode

Since you mentioned that, I have no choice but to post this link:

http://xkcd.com/619/

Obligatory

Posted May 20, 2011 2:57 UTC (Fri) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]

I dislike that particular comic, but you have a great point in bringing it up. The same flaw in the argument the comic is implicitly trying to make is also present in the parent's argument.

The 2.6.39 kernel is out

Posted May 20, 2011 5:53 UTC (Fri) by niner (guest, #26151) [Link]

I can play Flash videos in full-screen mode (2560x1600) without problems on my Radeon HD 5670 using the free r600g driver.

The 2.6.39 kernel is out

Posted May 19, 2011 21:51 UTC (Thu) by job (guest, #670) [Link] (4 responses)

There is no 3D support for Nvidia, unless you put yourself in the same situation with proprietary drivers again. The day Nvidia decides to stop supporting your hardware a few years from now you can never upgrade your system again.

Not good. If you're shopping for a laptop, go with Intel graphics. It's supposed to be much improved with Sandy Bridge anyway. The newest AMD/ATI chips are said to get decent free drivers some say, but I wouldn't take that chance right now.

The 2.6.39 kernel is out

Posted May 19, 2011 21:57 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

There is 3D support for Nvidia via the Nouveau driver by default in Fedora 15 but yes, it is better to support vendors who provide open source support themselves instead of relying on a community to reverse engineer and figure out things independently.

The 2.6.39 kernel is out

Posted May 20, 2011 0:49 UTC (Fri) by tetromino (guest, #33846) [Link] (2 responses)

>There is no 3D support for Nvidia, unless you put yourself in the same situation with proprietary drivers again. The day Nvidia decides to stop supporting your hardware a few years from now you can never upgrade your system again.

True, when using any proprietary driver, you run the risk of the vendor refusing to support your hardware at some point down the road. However, judging by past performance, Nvidia is reasonably good at keeping up with kernel and X API changes, and by the time the binary driver drops support for your video card, it's likely to be many years obsolete (Nvidia's current Linux driver still supports the GeForce FX series, released 8 years ago).

> If you're shopping for a laptop, go with Intel graphics. It's supposed to be much improved with Sandy Bridge anyway.

Bad advice. By all accounts, Sandy Bridge is rather unstable under Linux, and is thoroughly broken in 2.6.39.

The 2.6.39 kernel is out

Posted May 20, 2011 1:18 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

umm, did you miss the problems a few years ago when major distros were delaying updates to x.org because nvidia hadn't updated their drivers?

right now we have a situation where the AMD drivers don't work with a kernel released about 24 hours ago

wait and see how quickly (or slowly) the drivers get fixed before you start getting upset.

The 2.6.39 kernel is out

Posted May 20, 2011 17:12 UTC (Fri) by luto (subscriber, #39314) [Link]

>> If you're shopping for a laptop, go with Intel graphics. It's supposed to be much improved with Sandy Bridge anyway.

> Bad advice. By all accounts, Sandy Bridge is rather unstable under Linux, and is thoroughly broken in 2.6.39.

Victory! :(

It's my change that "thoroughly" broke it in 2.6.39, because without it my system (which was perfectly stable on 2.6.38) hangs immediately upon starting Gnome.

I imagine that this stuff will be fixed in a -stable release soon.

Also, if you're using Sandy Bridge, try installing more up-to-date x86-video-intel. Just build from -git and put this in xorg.conf:

Section "Files"
ModulePath "/usr/local/lib/xorg/modules"
ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules"
EndSection

The 2.6.39 kernel is out

Posted May 19, 2011 22:21 UTC (Thu) by Hausvib6 (guest, #70606) [Link]

Let's hope this will force AMD to just open their driver and fully support it, no more proprietary driver, just the free/open one like what Intel do.

Power management regressions

Posted May 20, 2011 7:43 UTC (Fri) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]

It seems that a couple of major power management regressions are not yet fixed: http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Phoronix-power-co...