Re: 2.4 vs 2.6

From: Jan Rychter (jan_at_rychter.com)
Date: 12/14/03

  • Next message: Cristiano De Michele: "another oops, maybe I'll downgrade to 2.4.22.. :(" 
    To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Date:	Sat, 13 Dec 2003 17:08:31 -0800

    >>>>> "Marcelo" == Marcelo Tosatti <marcelo.tosatti@cyclades.com> writes:
    [...]
     Marcelo> 2.6 is already stable enough for people to use it.

    Yes, that's an old post I'm responding to, but I've just given 2.6 a try
    on my desktop machine, and the above statement seems even more
    annoying. I hit the following problems:

      -- I had to wrestle ATI drivers into compiling, they finally did, but
         the kernel prints scary-looking warnings with call stacks, about
         "sleeping function called from invalid context at mm/slab.c:1856,
      -- modules don't autoload for some reason (though I'm sure that could
         be solved),
      -- bttv does not compile, so no video input for me,
      -- drivers for my telephony card (from Digium) are not 2.6-ready, so
         no telephony support for me,
      -- I have just frozen the machine hard by copying files over NFS and
         doing a simulation write to an ATAPI CD-RW at the same time.

    I haven't even gotten to VMware and user-mode Linux, which I also need,
    and I'm not even dreaming about getting my scanner to work. Not to
    mention that on my laptop there would be an entirely different set of
    issues, and software suspend in 2.6 is, well, still lacking.

    So, as for me, 2.6 is a definite no-no. I see no advantage whatsoever in
    running it, it caused me nothing but pain, and there is no improvement
    that I could see that would justify the upgrade.

    So please be careful when making statements like that. 2.6 is *NOT*
    stable enough nor ready enough for people to use it, unless those people
    have a narrow range of hardware on which the 2.6 kernel has actually
    been tested (translation: they have the same hardware as the main
    developers do).

    --J.

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  • Next message: Cristiano De Michele: "another oops, maybe I'll downgrade to 2.4.22.. :("

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