Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Sun, 26 Jan 1997 20:13:46 +0200 (EET) | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Subject | Linux-2.1.23 and administratrivia... |
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Hi all, just a quick announcement of 2.1.23 on the normal ftp-sites: this kernel contains several interesting patches:
- SMP cleanup: moving the kernel locks from low-level assembly into the C level (where we can now start to make it a lot mroe efficient and scalable). David Miller.
- Sparc updates. David & co.
- poll() system call. This one was required by Digital UNIX compatibility, and as just about everybody else (except native Linux/x86) including iBCS2 had a poll() emulation on top of select() I decided to do it _correctly_. In 2.1.23 the native internal interface is actually closer to "poll()", and select() is implemented on top of that interface.
The poll() stuff (along with some other things) make Linux able to run Digital UNIX 4.0 shared libs (or at least "netscape"), so if anybody has had problems with the Digital UNIX binary compatibility on alphas you might want to check it out with this kernel instead.
The SMP code isn't efficient _yet_, so don't expect to see a large jump in scalability at this point. It's just a huge conceptual step on the way to real scalability. And _definitely_ worth checking out for stability, because the patches are non-trivial.
The sparc update means that the default kernel should be more-or-less in sync with David Miller. Pretty much total integration.
Oh, over to other things. I just learnt that there have been lots of patches on the kernel mailing lists, and people have wondered why they haven't been applied. The simple answer is that I haven't been reading the mailing lists for the last month or two, due to the new baby and my thesis. The noise ratio was simply too bad for it to make much sense.
Please do continue to use the kernel mailing list for patches - but use it more as a "please test this out before I submit this to Linus" medium. If you have real patches that you _really_ think should go in the standard kernel, you should send them to me directly (or alternatively to the people that maintain that particular subsystem - I am not necessarily always the best person to send patches to).
Final note: it is likely that our move to the US starts at the end of next week. That's when the computers are packed and take the boat abroad. As a result, I probably won't have access to computers at home, and while I certainly intend to continue to maintain the kernel (through the university), I'll have even less time for secondary concerns. Bug-reports and valid patches will always be wellcome, but I might not react much to anything else..
Sorry for the inconvencience, I can only say that this should be temporary until we get settled down in the US..
Linus
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