2.6.8-nitro1 "Brute Horse Attack"

[jse86]

what the heck is a nitro patched source?

[butters]

To those confused about the purpose of the nitro patchset, or any of the others (love, xx, mm, ck, etc.):

As you can see on the first post in this thread, this kernel is kernel.org's vanilla 2.6.8 kernel, with a bunch of patches applied that make changes to the kernel source code. Some of these patches enable support for features not available in the mainline kernel:

reiser4, win4lin, supermount, squashfs, BadRAM workaround, lirc remote controls

And some of these patches are improvements on existing kernel technologies:

CFQ i/o scheduler, vesafb-tng, gensplash, staircase process scheduler

But the majority are patches to reduce latency (response time) for desktop users. This patchset is by far the fastest kernel I have ever used, in terms of the snappy response and general interactivity.

The hidden purpose of these patchsets is to allow many users to use and test new technologies that will one day make it to the mainline kernel. For example, reiser4 will soon become a standard filesystem option in the vanilla kernel. The testing made possible by nitro-sources and other reiser4-enabled patchsets helps developers iron out any wrinkles that remain so that the general release will go smoothly.

A word of advice is to always keep a backup kernel in your /boot partition that you know will boot your system. Although most of the problems I've had with various patchsets are minor stability problems, somtimes they won't boot at all for one reason or another. So make sure to keep your trusty stable kernel in your bootloader menu just in case.
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If tugboats were bigger, they'd be the ones getting tugged.

[jj11888]

[pleusicles]

seppe: thanks for the barriers patch

[Archangel1]

[kos]