2.6.1 kernel impressions.

[drag]

I am sorry if this is pretty redundent, but I have to say that I wish now I upgraded my kernel from 2.4 to 2.6 a long while ago. This is the first time I actually used it for anything.

And the responsiveness is wonderfull. I am doing another kernel compile right now as a test and with 100% cpu usage my system seems more responsive then it did when I was running 2.4 with the CPU at near idle.

And this is with the Xfree86 "NV" driver instead of the propriatory nvidia drivers.... Now I understand why people were whiling to wrestle with updating their systems rather then putz around with the old 2.4 series.

It's been awhile since I was pleasently suprised by my computer.

 

[Farfrael]

Thanks for the news

i have a question though, did you have to change anything regarding your firewall configuration ?
I am currently using shorewall and was wondering whether switching to 2.6 would cause any problems.
I seem to remember that they introduced a new way to deal with filtering and such in the 2.6 line of kernels.

As an afterthought, care to tell us what you use as a firewall (iptable rules ? some kind of script ?) ?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Farfrael
Thanks for the news

i have a question though, did you have to change anything regarding your firewall configuration ?
I am currently using shorewall and was wondering whether switching to 2.6 would cause any problems.
I seem to remember that they introduced a new way to deal with filtering and such in the 2.6 line of kernels.

As an afterthought, care to tell us what you use as a firewall (iptable rules ? some kind of script ?) ?

I don't really keep up with Linux kernel development, but I haven't heard anything about a new firewall for it. Chances are, old firewall configs (iptables) should still work. If they changed the firewall again this soon, I'd be installing FreeBSD or NetBSD on my dual p3 ASAP.

 

[drag]

I also found pre-patched 2.6 nvidia driver installers from here

Which makes it easier so you don't have to extract and patch it yourself to get geforce cards with accelerated 3d stuff.


Also I had to run the installer like this:
./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-5328-pkg0.run --kernel-name=2.6.1.drag --kernel-source-path=/usr/src/linux-2.6.1

Since I am used the debian kernel tools to build my kernel and I added .drag onto the end of it. I don't know if that was completely neccisary, though.

I also had to force the module loading, which I don't like doing. But it seems to work OK, haven't had any crashes or anything (yet, stupid propriatory module drivers....) like this:

modprobe -f nvidia


It could be that the kernel could be just adding in the extra effort so that you know that the kernel developer's aren't responsible for the kernel once you plug unknown and propriatory code into the kernel.

 

[drag]

As an afterthought, care to tell us what you use as a firewall (iptable rules ? some kind of script ?) ?

Me? I just use a seperate obsolete 2.2 kernel-based firewall. I realy need to update it, but I need to find a harddrive that is big enough (above 1 gig) but below what I care about on any other machine (less then 10 gig) and probably a cdrom drive for it. I run it off of a floppy disk right now.

I am pretty worthless when it comes to firewall stuff, my router/firewall works good enough and that's all I care about it right now. NAT is pretty secure and I only have a couple services poking thru to the outside world. The router denies and logs all questionable packets directed at itself. It's amazing the amount of crap floating around a local networked cable internet connection segment.

 

[Nothinman]

I didn't really notice any performance increases with 2.6, but I have a SMP setup so maybe it's more noticable if you only have 1 CPU.

I never had to force the module to load, it always just loaded with 'modprobe nvidia' as it should. Make sure it produced a nvidia.ko instead of nvidia.o as it used to, the kernel modules no longer use .o as their extension.

 

[Haden]

I feel big difference between 2.4 and 2.6 after I've got HT P4 (besides, top shows totaly invalid "cpu's" load in 2.4).

 

[Nothinman]

You might want to poke around lkml for an HT-aware scheduler patch, the one in 2.4 and 2.6 just treat logical CPUs as physical and can cause HT to produce more slowdowns than speedups.

 

[Idoxash]

Does anyone know when Mandrake will release 2.6.1 kernel update? I have yet to find it on their site or in their update tools.

--Idoxash

 

[Drift3r]

Originally posted by: Idoxash
Does anyone know when Mandrake will release 2.6.1 kernel update? I have yet to find it on their site or in their update tools.

--Idoxash

They will release it with their next version OS being 10. It will feature KDE 3.2, XFree86 3.40, Gnome 2.6 and Kernel 2.6.x.x. They will be waiting for Gnome 2.6 to roll out before releasing it. This way they have all the major updates and versions of stuff we care about in version 10.


P.S. - Opps sorry I thought you were talking about when they would next release their new version of Mandrake.

 

[Drift3r]

**double-post**

 

[Crusty]

Originally posted by: Idoxash
Does anyone know when Mandrake will release 2.6.1 kernel update? I have yet to find it on their site or in their update tools.

--Idoxash

You could just download the source and compile it yourself...its not that hard...and there are TONS of tutorials out there.