Is 2.6 worth upgrading to?

alligator421 · Apprentice Joined: 30 Jul 2003 Posts: 191

from gentoo-souces 2.4.20-r9 (with prempt), I've tested 2.6.0 kernel (for just a few time I admit) but I haven't noticed many features special worth upgrading right now.
It seems stable and reliable.
However, when there is heavy disk access, for example at the end of an "emerge sync", "updating portage cache", I noticed my mouse lags a bit. I never noticed that with my stock gentoo-source kernel.

GentooBox · Veteran Joined: 22 Jun 2003 Posts: 1168 Location: Denmark

This is my system:

MSI nforce2
XP2500+ barton
512 mb memory
1 x 120 gb and 1 x 20 gb harddisk.
Sound blaster live
3 x realtek net.

It works like a charm

i love the 2.6 kernel, and best of all, its stable AND fast at the same time.
The mouse is better, the system is more responsive.
better module support, better multi-CPU support.

its perfect.

<3 kernel 2.6.0 stable
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snutte · Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2003 2:35 pm Post subject:

2.6 is the best thing since sliced bread.

Mike Staib · n00b Joined: 22 Sep 2003 Posts: 20

I have a P4 1.4 ghz machine with 256mb ram. 2.6 runs so fast it feels like I have a new machine. When I am compiling my system stays responsive where as before my mouse would jump. The built in ALSA sounds great! I have a Sound Blaster live and it was a breeze to configure. If you have a slower machine, you may really notice an improvement with 2.6.
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Decibels · Veteran Joined: 16 Aug 2002 Posts: 1623 Location: U.S.A.

The Mountain Man · l33t Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 643

2.6 seems to work great for me. I've not noticed any dramatic speed improvements, but the streamlined compilation process is worth the price of admission on its own. Also, having built-in ALSA and native ATAPI CD-RW support is a real plus. Boot times for me seem a little faster, but I've not done any formal benchmarking.
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Digiman

what do I emerge to get the latest stable 2.6.0 kernel?

Would it be easier to just do a complete reinstall of the system or is building the kernel on a 2.4.23 system ok?

Thank you,
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mlsfit138 · Guru Joined: 20 Sep 2003 Posts: 406 Location: Washington

||kafre|| · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 15 Sep 2003 Posts: 114

i have now working 2.6 kernel, and i noticed better perfomance in hard disk access and when u do something in the background the mouse doesnt jump.
my computer is a 2.6 barton with 512ddr333 mem hard disks are udma133, it seems not only better perfomance on slow machines

( maybe better nforce2 support????? )

nsahoo · l33t Joined: 17 Jul 2003 Posts: 618

It's more responsive .. meaning the difference is very much noticeable. for instance, I use hotkeys to use my multimedia keys and its "play/pause button" executes "xmms --play-pause". In 2.4.20-gentoo-r9 or 2.4.22-gentoo-r1/r2, it used to take 1 to 2 seconds from the time you press the key and the music stops (or starts), it was like you hit the key, you see the green display on your monitor "xmms --play-pause", and then you know it's going to happen and then it does. Now, it's one event, you can feel the difference by hitting twice quickly, it syncs with your key stroke - like switching off (or on) a light. Thats one observation that convinced me that it's something good. And then there are other things like integrated ALSA which supports SB Audigy PCI card, so you don't have to use emu10k1-cvs from portage.

Other things are pretty much same, like may be mozilla starts 1 second faster i.e. in 4 seconds instead of 5, but, you don't notice those things.

Another point is my mouse was jerky in 2.6-test.x i.e. when I used them from vanilla kernel releases, I don't know if gentoo-dev-sources, applies any patches on it to correct it, but, after I switched to gentoo-dev-sources, it was fine again. FYI, 2.4 gentoo-sources never gave me any jerky mouse no matter what I compiled.

Thats pretty much it, another BIG factor for me for moving to kernel-2.6 is everyone beginning moving onto it and I like to be at the edge. Having said that it took me good one half of a day to make the configuration file and many reboots to get everything working fine again, like, alsa (I was not using alsa in 2.4), ati-radeon drivers etc. You can't put the .config file of 2.4 into 2.6 directory and make oldconfig, that's not gonna work.

enjoy.

mlsfit138 · Guru Joined: 20 Sep 2003 Posts: 406 Location: Washington

I'm having some serious problems with the gentoo 2.6 kernel. everyone says things like their mouse doesn't lag anymore, and alsa has is so much better than OSS. So far, I haven't heard a sound, and when I put a heavy load on my system, the mouse sometimes completely freezes! None of this "snappiness" I've been hearing about either.! I want my money back! :wink:

Some other strange problems I've encountered were:

No terminals! I couldn't start an xterm session, couldn't use ctrl-alt-f2 to bring up another tty or anything! I resolved this by enabling some weird option in pseudo file systems or something. You would think that the gentoo devs would enable this by default!

Even though i've fixed the tty problem, I still can't ctrl-alt-f2 to bring up another term. It may have something to do with the fact that I run qingy (a nice directFB gettty program). I get weird graphical errors. this didn't happen in the 2.4 kernel

Can't scroll with my Plain Jane ps2 laser mouse. (which sucks because I use fluxbox)

Lost my nice 3d support. I had to use drm xfree under 2.4. I haven't really messed with this much to be honest. I can probably get it working the way i had it under 2.4, (completely disable all radeon support in the kernel, and emerge xfree-drm) I had just hoped that they added support for my ancient radeon 7200 (r100) chip to the kernel.

Well, when I get time, I'll mess with all of this stuff, but in the meantime, it's back to 2.4 for me. I'd imagine that the gentoo dev team is going to be hitting this release pretty hard to make 2.6 the default gentoo kernel, so I may not have to worry about it much longer!
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gennro · n00b Joined: 05 Aug 2003 Posts: 4

Well so far i built a system up around 2.6 and seems to be doing fine but have ran into problems like alsa and ati drivers, but were easily fixed by using the nice search feature. I think i'll go back to 2.4 because it seems a bit more stable and not everything is working all that well with 2.6 yet. Like i had some problems with eject compiliing, so i had to just do emerge inject eject. Well thats my 2 cents.

5a\/ag3 · Posted: Sun Feb 22, 2004 8:37 am Post subject: 2.6.x Kernel My .02 Cents

Much better response and way easier to install in my opinion, I always had problems with the 2.2 and 2.4 tree kernels after I tried the 2.6 test I will not hesitate to redo my kernel , hardware support is excellent and I have yet to see it fail.

Well there ya go
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