On Tue, Oct 09, 2001 at 05:38:25PM -0400, Russell Hires wrote:
> Are we talking about kernels? According kernel.org, 2.4.10 is the latest
> stable version, and 2.4.11-pre6 is alpha...2.5.xx is supposed to be the next
> round of testing kernels.
>
> Meanwhile, I don't understand why there are so many crashes with any of these
> kernels...why isn't 2.4.xx stable? I know about the high load issue, but
> that's all I've heard about it. 2.2.19 is very stable....
>
If you follow the kernel traffic (I don't subscribe to the kernel lists,
but I track kernel progress at LWN weekly), you'll see that a great many
unstable mods have been checked into the 2.4 series kernels. Likewise,
some fairly radical changes have been made in what otherwise would be
stable kernel branch. That's why you see a lot of grumbling about 2.4.X
being better named as 2.3 or 2.5. Much of what gets checked in goes
through Alan Cox and gets tested first, but Alan has refused to merge
some changes that Linus has insisted upon; Linus has incorporated them
in the main kernel anyway.
The 2.4 series has been a very troublesome kernel. One of the bigger
issues is the virtual machine (VM) subsystem, which Derek has mentioned
before. Kinda critical if you thrash your system a lot.
Some have had no trouble with this kernel, and it does have some
enhanced and desirable capabilities. But until it settles out a bit
more, I'd advise staying with the 2.2 series, IMHO. Alan Cox is doing an
excellent job of backporting things to it.
Paul
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