Tag: kernel

Linux kernel 3.0 is near

Linux Torvalds, has signed off the release candidate version as Linux 3.0 RC1.
What is new in it ?

  • New Microsoft Kinect driver
  • updated graphics drivers
  • cleancache support
  • optimizations for Intel and AMD processors

But mainly this new numbering will force companies to keep their products close to the latest kernels. Right now there are many companies that trumpet they support 2.6 kernel and in fact they are supporting the old 2.6.26 or worse version.

Also this move celebrates Linux entering in it’s third decade of life.

Well . I can say that i’m slightly older than linux . But not with much.

 

Linux Kernel where is going

At Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit 14 April 2010 it was a very interesting session on Q and A about linux kernel. Here are the main ideas discussed:

1) Documentation (lack of) – The documentation itself should be inside the kernel itself.

2) Need for new blood . Some of the original developers are getting old.

3) Keeping Independent thinkers is very important.

4) Fixing scheduler is around the corner. RTT will be merged into kernel.

5) Android is forking a part of kernel. There will be tries to merge codes between Google and Linux Kernel.

6) A person ( or persons ) are needed to reduce the kernel bloat ( kernel foot print )

DRBD is finally in kernel

DRBD refers to block devices designed as a building block to form high availability (HA) clusters. This is done by mirroring a whole block device via an assigned network. DRBD can be understood as network based raid-1.
Today i happily found that DRBD was added to the upcoming linux kernel 2.6.33. Until now TFM could support DRBD but sometimes it got obsolete or we had lots of compilation problems because we are keeping up to date to kernel tree and DRBD was a little slow when big changes appeared in kernel.
In the next few days we will prepare and add to TFM some ready to use examples regarding DRBD.
Ralink’s RT2860 drivers and support for RT3090 PCI Wi-Fi chips were also added to the kernel. As usual around Christmas there are a lot of developments in Linux World.