LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Damien Uern <carrigan_2606@optusnet.com.au>
  To  : <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 00:16:07 +0930

Impressions of 2.6.0-test2

Howdy,

I have recently installed kernel 2.6.0-test2 on my knoppix 3.2 hdd install. 
Here is some general advice on getting it going, followed by my first 
impressions:

Unpack the tarball (tar -xjvf linux-2.6.0-test2.tar.bz2), enter the directory 
and type "make xconfig" (make sure you have qt devel libraries installed). 
Choose only the drivers that you need for your system, you will find that 
many don't compile yet. Check 
http://www.codemonkey.org.uk/post-halloween-2.5.txt for things to expect 
(make sure to enable Virtual Terminal support!).

Save this, then type:

$ make
$ make modules_install
$ make install

Configure lilo to point to the new kernel and run lilo. Reboot into the new 
kernel (hopefully it'll work, it took me 5 or 6 goes to get it going).

Impressions:

Doesn't seem that much different to 2.4 to me so far. The scheduler seems like 
it's on it's way to becoming better than 2.4 (it seems to handle high loads 
better), however it seems to have some serious problems for me. I performed 
the following test:

cd to linux kernel source directory
$ make clean
$ make -j3

I also ran "find /usr -name '*'" and managed to get the load up around 3-5. I 
then grabbed the Mozilla window and swirled it around in circles -- all 
seemed well for a few seconds, but it then started intermittently pausing 
(pausing the mouse as well). I've also experienced this in other programs 
whilst moving its window around. I've even had mouse lag when Mozilla 
refreshed it's page.

Other problems: Some apps seem to go to sleep and never wake up, or take 
extroadinarily long times to complete their tasks. Openoffice died once under 
this new kernel (just sat there, not taking up any CPU, just hanging around). 
Whilst the load was still high I opened LyX and did view->DVI on a document 
after a few minutes I checked the process list and latex was just sitting 
there doing nothing. Strange...

Another simple test is when an mp3/ogg just starts playing in xmms, I click 
the KDE task bar of a maximised app a few times (thereby sending it to the 
taskbar and then redrawing it maximised several times fairly rapidly) and I 
get sound skips in xmms for the first few times -- no such problems under 
2.4.

Launch speeds under high load seems to be better. Apart from the strange 
pauses, responsiveness is quite good under high load too.

Anyone else tested the 2.6 series yet? Any comments?

Cheers,

Damien

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