Why are people still running Kernel 2.4?

<3 · Veteran Joined: 21 Oct 2004 Posts: 1085

This is July 2006 and I think the 2.6 kernel debuted in sometime in 2003. That would make this branch more than 3 years old. I am just wondering if you are still running 2.4 why haven't you made the switch yet? At this point in time I don't think 2.4 is any more stable than 2.6. So is it because you are too scared to change or is it that you are too lazy? :wink:

m_spidey · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 5:53 am Post subject:

I'm gonna take a wild stab in the dark, I think cd/dvd burning might be better in 2.4.
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sgarcia · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 5:57 am Post subject:

For the record, I'm running 2.6 on all my Gentoo machines, as well as all my Debian and CentOS machines. I've got 2.4 on a couple of firewalls, and I even have one "old reliable" that sits behind a firewall that's running 2.0. FWIW.

On the other hand, 2.6 is *not* as stable as 2.4. There is no designated development branch, as there was with previous "stable" versions -- right now 2.6 is *it*. That means that we keep getting cool new functionality in the "stable" kernel, but it comes at the price that the kernel breaks things occasionally.

2.6 is better in many ways, especially with regard to pre-emptive scheduling, etc. But don't fool yourself that it is as stable.