Re: Linux 3.0 change listings - Wonderful World of Linux 3.0

From: david
Date: Tue May 31 2011 - 01:49:13 EST


keep in mind as you are creating this document how it will be misquoted by the press (among others)

it undermines credibility to claim features as 'new' that have been around for many years. It also hurts to be seen as claiming lots of new stuff and how revolutionary 3.0 is when Linus is going out of his way to point how how 3.0 is not some big new thing.

If people start getting the idea that 3.0 is revolutionary (and a huge list of 'new' features encourages this), they will make it harder for people maintaining systems to swtich to it.

David Lang

On Tue, 31 May 2011, Joe Pranevich wrote:

Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 01:22:49 -0400
From: Joe Pranevich <jpranevich@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Mike Frysinger <vapier.adi@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Linux 3.0 change listings - Wonderful World of Linux 3.0

Mike,

Thank you. I appreciate the comments and the corrections. It was a
marathon weekend and yes, I missed some obvious typos. Thanks.

As far as what is supported and when, my rule has been that if it is
labeled as "experimental", then it isn't released. So, that accounts
for why I didn't list NFSd v4 in this doc, even though there is a
module for it. (I should make this more clear though.) Similarly, I
*do* list IPv6 as new. It was listed as experimental in v2.6.0, so
that qualifies it for inclusion here. And finally, I wasn't aware of
NTFS-on-FUSE. I'm just researching the kernel tree, but I'll
definitely dig at that and make a note of it. I have made a note of
the rest for further research. I know I missed things.

As an aside, there are several ways to look at the v3 release. It is
just a minor rev over v2.6.39 (and I hope I make that clear in the
doc), but it's also a chance to step back and look at just how far
Linux has come in little increments over the last seven years. It was
difficult to get excited over v2.6.12 or v2.6.22... no matter how
great those releases may have been. But v3 means that we can step back
and see the whole 2.6 series in perspective. And it looks awfully
nice.

Joe


On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 11:16 PM, Mike Frysinger <vapier.adi@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 15:59, Joe Pranevich wrote:
organizations use virtualization to keep down hardware costs and
reduce downtime do to system failures. Linux 3.0 significantly

"do to" -> "due to"

monitoring chipsets for fault recognition, temperature management, and
similar. This grants server administrators more visibility into their
gear and can help prevent crashes.

not sure this helps prevent crashes.  perhaps "helps mitigate downtime" ?

encryption keys that are required for this and other encryption
subssytems.

subsystems

On the network side, Linux now supports a new caching add-on for
network filesystems. This allows the OS to create and manage a local
on-disk cache of a remote NFS or CIFS filesystem, decreasing latency
while being fully transparent to the end-user.

i dont think it is limited to remote filesystems

Linux also now supports
NFSv4, the fourth version of the venerable Network Filesystem as a
client. However, Linux only supports running NFSv3 as a server.

what about CONFIG_NFSD_V4 ?  that looks like NFSv4 as a server to me ...

While Linux 3.0 still has difficulty accessing NTFS volumes (the
default on modern versions of Windows), support for mounting Windows
network shares has been significantly improved.

with ntfs3g (built on FUSE), i dont think this is an accurate
statement.  even if your focus is purely on in-kernel fs's, this is at
least a bit misleading.

In conjunction with an internal sensor, this
feature can mean the difference between a nasty look at a pet or loved
one or a nasty look at a pet or loved one followed by a trip to the

i think the first "or" on this last line should be an "and"

devices. Linux also supports (or will support, when the hardware is
generally available) the Tile processors designed by Tilera in Silicon
Valley. They massively multi-core processors have a unique split
between functionality of general-purpose processors and more specific

"They massively" -> "The massively"

processing such as would be done on a GPU. Other new supported
processors include the Microblaze, S+core, Blackfin, Atmel, and the
64-bit version of the Super-H.

i dont think "Atmel" is an architecture.  i think you meant "AVR32".

Perhaps the most noteworthy feature addition in Linux 3.0 is the
inclusion of IPv6.

i'm pretty sure at least Linux 2.4 had support for IPv6.

Two other core network features are worthy of note. First, the Linux
network subsystem has been made considerably faster on multi-processor
systems. Unlike under Linux 2.6, incoming network traffic on different
interfaces can now be handled on multiple CPUs. This will ensure that
Linux can deal with multiple high-throughput network devices with less
latency.

i think there's also support for multi transmit ?  or has that not
been merged yet ?

And second, the Linux wireless driver system has been
completely rewritten. In addition to just supporting many new devices,
these devices are now supported in a more uniform way and with more
features available on more of the cards. Key here are improvements to
the low-level Ethernet implementation (including a complete software
stack where necessary), QoS support, and others.

the inclusion of the soft mac80211 stuff is pretty note worthy

or monitored. WiMax is also new in Linux 3.0. This technology, with
the correct hardware, allows for joining wide area wireless networks

"correct" is a bit awkward.  how about "right" ?

Device Busses

buses

An unsung hero, device busses are the way that peripherals (both

buses

One major advancement since the launch of Linux 2.6 has been the
emergence of the PCI Express Bus. PCI Express, sometimes called PCI-E,

"called" -> "referred to as"

such as hot-plugging. Support for external busses has also

buses

that comply with the USB3 specification) as well as many other drivers

USB 3.0

Firewire, another type of serial bus common in video processing and
other environments, has also be improved in Linux 3.0 with the

"be" -> "been"

hardware. Now stable in Linux 3.0 is ?USB On-The-Go?, the device side

might be useful to include "OTG" in here

communicate with a host which speaks the USB protocol. A similar
system, though not used in home computing, is the ?Controller Area
Network?.

definitely would be useful to have "CAN" in here

This system is primarily used in automotive and military
computing when multiple devices want to communicate with each other
without the presence of a ?host? computer to orchestrate.

one of the other major reasons for CAN is robustness is the high noise
automative/military world
-mike

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