Why 2.6.0 is a "Very Good Thing"

[SpookyEddy]

Look at all the shiny features

[nukes]

I see you're very taken with this. Do you actually feel a difference in it? Is it more responsive?
We should probably wait and see how this SCO suit turns out first.
Actually, sod that - if MS can loose a lawsuit and actually profit from this 'loss' then I see no valid reason IBM shouldn't be able to do the same. They invented the PC technology. Caldera are just a bunch of twits.

[storm2k]

interesting stuff. i think this is a good sign that linus and the boys are doing a good job of making the linux kernel even more and more modernized... balancing it's traditional unix roots with today's up and coming hardware and software needs.

[nukes]

That's what makes Linux so great. You have the stability and system layout much like UNIX, but it supports a lot more than probably any other *nix at the same time, and it is constantly being tweaked.

[dunbar]

There is enriched support for existing stuff (network, security, SCSI, etc), that can't hurt, and the effort has implanted and enabled hooks for newer functions. All well and good, but as was stated at the bottom

Although Linux 2.6 is a major upgrade, the difference to user-mode applications will be nearly non-existent. The one major exception to this rule appears to be threading: some applications may do things that worked under 2.4 or 2.2 but are no longer allowed.

Looks like administration became a lot more user-friendly:

now Linux is now a "true" Plug-and-Play OS and may be set as such in a compatible machine's BIOS.

What else, spooky?

[SpookyEddy]

Well a few things I noticed include:

• Preempt support.
  More File Systems supported (including XFS).
  ALSA Support (so more sound cards supported than ever before).
  Improved USB2.0 Support (performance is greatly increased on my Iomega disk).
  Tweaked configuration interfaces (QT based xconfig and new layout in menuconfig etc).
  Greatly improved IO scheduler (moving large files between IDE disks no longer brings my system to its knees).

These are just my initial impressions and a few things I could think of off the top of my head.

Regards

ed

[nukes]

ACtually, the qt thing isn't new, it just replaces the gconfig that used to be ised. If you're like me (and you should probably pray to god that you're not) and prefer the old interface, you can still get a GTK version of it using gconfig instead of xconfig.
Also, they have included newer I2C drivers and modules for hardware sensors on some systems (temps, fan speeds etc) but last I looked this was still a pretty small number compared to the number of drivers availiable.
I for one would like to see a more up-to-date DRI tree in the kernel with better AGP support, as at the moment I have to keep running external modules that I'm sure I've moaned about before, and hopefully, by the time the final one comes out, we will get the FULL lm_lensors driver set merged into the kernel.

So when is a major distro going to include it? The last time I tried a kernal upgrade with RedHat it went very, very wrong.

[SpookyEddy]

So when is a major distro going to include it? The last time I tried a kernal upgrade with RedHat it went very, very wrong.

Its still in the testing phase so not for a good few months I would think.

Actually, the qt thing isn't new

I was under the impression that the switch to QT as default was a recent one. Live and learn

The i2c stack seems to work fine with my TV Tuner.

Regards

eddy

[nukes]

naw, the qconf has been the default in the 2.5 tree for quite some time.
Glad to hear that about your tuner card, maybe its time for me to put mine back in. Its a BT487 or something. There's modules for it in 2.4 but I never bothered setting it up as I don't have an antenna up here.

The last time I tried a kernal upgrade with RedHat it went very, very wrong.

You should see mandrakes latest kernel!
http://www.techimo.com/forum/t73323.html
Makes me glad I roll my own.