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18 <h1 align=center>Linux 2.4 - Change Report</h1>
20 <h3 align=center>Linux 2.4 has been released on January 4th</h3>
22 <p>Read <a href=linux-2.4-mail.php3>Linus Torvalds Mail Announcement</a> to linux-kernel.
24 <p>This page will only give you a rough overview about the changes in
25 Linux 2.4.0 compared with earlier stable releases 2.2.0 and 2.2.18.
27 <p>First of all, the increase in size is amazing. Linux Kernel 2.4.0
28 is nearly double as <em>fat</em> as version 2.2.0. While 2.2.0 from
29 the early days was only 55MB uncompressed, Linux 2.4.0 is now at over
30 100 megebytes pure sourcecode. This should give you a first idea
31 about the amount of improvements and additions. In terms of sheer
32 volume of code, Linux is made up of drivers.
34 <sect>Statistics</sect>
38 <table cellspacing=0 cellpadding=2 border=0>
40 <th><ifont>Kernel</ifont></th>
41 <th><ifont>Size/MB</ifont></th>
42 <th><ifont>Conf Opts</ifont></th>
43 <th><ifont>Archs</ifont></th>
44 <th><ifont> Dirs</ifont></th>
45 <th><ifont> Files</ifont></th>
48 <define-tag row whitespace=delete>
49 <preserve version size conf dirs files archs color>
51 <tr bgcolor="<get-var color>">
52 <td><ifont><get-var version></ifont></td>
53 <td><ifont><get-var size></ifont></td>
54 <td align=right><ifont><get-var archs></ifont></td>
55 <td align=right><ifont><get-var conf> </ifont></td>
56 <td align=right><ifont><get-var dirs></ifont></td>
57 <td align=right><ifont><get-var files></ifont></td>
59 <restore version size conf dirs files color archs>
87 <blockquote><font size=-2>
88 Small note: Size was counted as tar.bz and .tar, config options were
89 measured as <code>grep "^CONFIG_"
90 Documentation/Configure.help</code>, dirs and files were counted by
91 using <code>find</find>.
94 <p>Little after the S/390 architecture was introduced in 2.4.0 it got
95 backported to late 2.2.x kernels. Entirely new in 2.4.0 are ia64
96 alias Itanium or Merced, 64bit MIPS/MIPSel, HP PA-RISC and SuperH.
98 <sect>Filesystems</sect>
100 <p>Several problems and flaws in the VFS subsystem (virtual
101 filesystem) and file caches have been fixed. The buffer system has
102 been simplified in 2.4. Another former limitation of Linux has been
103 removed. You are now able to mount filesystems as many times as you
104 like (instead of only once).
106 <p>LVM (Logical Volume Manager) has been ported to Linux. Using this
107 you get the possibility to resize filesystems, move them onto other
108 disks, spread them over a whole bunch of disks and take snapshots of
109 the current content. All of this is done on-the-fly during regular
110 run time. Have you ever thought about how you can increase your /home
111 filesystems with some of the free gigabytes in /var? With LVM you
112 simply hook a new physical volume to the volume group that contains
115 <p>While all kinds of filesystems are supported that are known to DOS,
116 Windows, OS/2, MacOS as well as BSD disklabel are available under
117 Linux as well for both reading and writing (for OS/2 this was a long
118 awaited feature). Support for the filesystem used for BeOS is not yet
119 included but expected for later 2.4.x kernels. Two new filesystems
120 have been included in Linux 2.4. The first one is UDF which is widely
121 used on DVDs and the second one is EFS which was released under a free
122 license from SGI and which was used on older IRIX boxes.
124 <p>Journaling filesystems which were long awaited for Linux have not
125 yet been included in Linux 2.4, even though several projects are close
126 to providing this functionality (ext3, reiser, xfs). At least
127 ReiserFS which is the most mature one is expected to be included in
128 later 2.4.x kernels. If you want to use it at the moment (first <b>be
129 careful!</b>)) you'll have to fetch addtionional patches.
131 <p>When using large disks (30gb and above) booting Linux can take ages
132 when a filesytem check is required at boot time. A well-designed
133 journaling filesystem can be much more easily restored after a crash
134 and thus a filesystem check will be a lot faster than before.
136 <p>When talking about network filesytems, NFS is the choice among Unix
137 and Unix-like systems. NFS has been improved in 2.4 as well as moving
138 from separate NFS servers to a kernel based NFS server. Linux also
139 supports NFSv3 which provides much better support for filesystem
140 synchronization, file locks, and other concepts important to
141 enterprise environments.
143 <sect>Architectures</sect>
145 <p>Linux is the only operating system kernel that runs on such a large
146 scale of different hardware besides NetBSD (which, in fact, seems to
147 run on any hardware found on this planet). The port to the IBM S/390
148 architecture was pushed by IBM itself and then backported to the
149 stable kernel version at that time, probably due to the increased
152 <p>The <a href="http://parisc-linux.org/">PA-RISC port</a> looks
153 promising, even though it is still far from being finished. Linux
154 already boots on a large variety of machines, both the toolchain
155 (binutils, gcc, glibc etc.) and XFree86 should run on those machines.
156 However, due to the large variety of used hardware by HP a lot of
157 drivers are still missing.
159 <p>SuperH is a new architecture from swashing over from asia, normally
160 tied to to Windows CE and its application. Included is support for
161 intels 64bit sucessor of the i386 processror: Itanium, Merced or ia64,
162 even though the processor is not ready for the masses yet. On a
163 related subject, Linux did have issues with processors faster than
164 2GHz which have been solved a while ago. Although no such processors
165 exist yet, they are expected in the near future, given the fact that
166 1.3GHz are already running. Speaking of intel hardware, even MMX and
167 MMX2 technologies are now supported.
169 <p>While Linux 2.2 only supported IO-APIC (Advanced Programmable
170 Interrupt Controller) on multiprocessor systems, it now also supports
171 it on single-processor systems as well as multiple IO-APICs.
172 Optimizations for speed have been developed for all processor types.
173 Support for MTRRs (Memory Type Range Registers) has be highly
174 improved. This is, for example, most useful if you have a video (VGA)
175 card on a PCI or AGP bus. Enabling write-combining allows bus write
176 transfers to be combined into a larger transfer before bursting over
177 the PCI/AGP bus. This can increase performance of image write
178 operations 2.5 times or more.
180 <sect>Resource Management</sect>
182 <p>Linux 2.4. is the first kernel that deliveres with a full-featured
183 resource management subsystem. While Linux 2.2 didn't contain what
184 was required to do proper Plug'n'Play with 2.4 this is the case. The
185 PCI card database has been revived as well, so that all resources can
186 have an associated device name, rather than just an associated driver.
188 <p>The process scheduler has also been improved to be more efficient
189 on systems with large number of concurrent processes. Even though
190 this will only be visible on large boxes Linux has passed the 64k user
191 limit. It now supports up to 4.2 billion users and groups. On a
192 related issue, on the intel architecture Linux now supports up to 64
193 gigabytes of RAM, up to 16 Ethernet cards and 10 IDE controllers.
194 Look at all those nice and heavy Netfinity servers, they will be able
195 run Linux these days.
197 <p>Linux 2.4 has included support for the USB (Universal Serial Bus)
198 which comes with about every new motherboard for intel-based
199 hardware. Some laptops even depend on USB for their CD-ROM and Floppy
200 drives. With USB you can use any piece of hardware: keyboard, mice,
201 scanner, video, printers, sound etc. Even though Linux support is
202 still in the early stages, it already supports a large percentage of
205 <p>Also supported is Firewire (IEEE1394, or i.Link for Sony) which is
206 a popular option for high-bandwidth devices. Like USB it is built in
207 into many current laptops.
209 # <font size=-1><p><em>This document is not yet finished but will be worked on during the next few days.</em></font>
211 <author>Joey</author>
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