12/18/2003: 
Technologica
Linux 2.6 Kernel Released
by Peter Sayer, ComputerWorld
Version 2.6.0 of the Linux kernel is ready for business. Readers of the Linux-kernel mailing list learned late yesterday that testing of the open-source operating system's new core had ended when they received an e-mail from Linus Torvalds that began with the cryptic phrase, "The beaver is out of detox."
Version 2.6 should run well on servers, although large database applications will experience performance problems, kernel maintainer Andrew Morton wrote in an e-mail to the Linux-kernel mailing list. Fixes have already been found for some of these problems, and they will be introduced in Version 2.6.1, he said. Database application performance can be improved somewhat by changing the default behavior of the kernel's input-output scheduler, he added.
The first of 11 test versions of the 2.6 kernel was released on July 13. Since the sixth one appeared in late September, the number of bug fixes has been shrinking with each new release.
"The patch from -test11 is a svelte 11K bytes in size," Torvalds wrote to the Linux-kernel mailing list. "It's not the totally empty patch I was hoping for, but judging by the bugs I worked on personally, things are looking pretty good."
1 Annotation Submitted
Thursday the 18th of December, rafuzo noted:
A good rule of thumb: never trust a linux kernel that's less than a double-digit minor release (i.e. 2.6.xx). Give it a few months' soak time. The preemptable kernel is bound to cause problems.
