Hi friend Slackers,

Fow what I have seen, SL64 <current>ships with kernel 2.6.33.x

I am still running good ol' 2.6.29.6 no complaints, stable as Battleship Yamato...

Is there any noticed advantage in running the newer kernel as compared to the original of Slackware64 13... ?

Stability, speed... ?

You tell me... didn't try yet...

BRGDS

Alex

Current is actually running 2.6.32.5.

The list of changes from 2.6.29 is pretty large.

I'd suggest you take a look at http://kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges as there may or may not be things that are of use/interest to you.

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I think slackware current is using 2.6.32.5 at this point. 2.6.33 is still in release candidates.
The present stable at kernel.org is 2.6.32.7 and the mainline is at 2.6.33.rc-6

I'm running 2.6.33-rc5 on a slack64 box, but all of my hardware was supported in 2.6.29.6 as well. For me it's less about NEEDING a kernel vs. checking out the various options and testing any mods I've made for build time.

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Not in my experience. However, I am running 2.6.32.x, so I have to admit that up front. There is one difference you'll notice right away if you're using any EIDE drives on your system... there is no IDE support in the 2.6.32(3).x kernel... all libATA from now on, it looks like. This affected me because I do have one EIDE drive. Most folks are all running SATA these days, so they won't even notice the diff.

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Hi ppl

Thkz for yr answers...

...Guess I will stick to 2.6.29.6... works for me...

BRGDS

Alex

Last night's changelog says that current is now at 2.6.32.7

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Yep. Upgraded my 32 bit -current box last night to 2.6.32.7. All is well.

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I've been running 2.6.32.5 for some time now, and have no issues whatsoever with it (nothing bad, I mean). I tend to follow the new releases pretty regularly.

@ vtel -- isn't that change with the libATA, the one that causes all drives to become sd* rather than hd* ? FWIW I thought that happened quite a while ago. Is it just the Slack kernel that had no EIDE support, or the vanilla one?
And, for the same of this kernel discussion, what's really the difference between EIDE and IDE? I can't really get much significant out of this wikipedia article that applies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA

Finally: my hd* drives are still hd* so this libATA change has had be wondering for some time, when will I get surprised by this change to sd*.

Sasha

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I upgraded from slackware64-13.0 to slackware64-13.0 and not having /dev/hd* devices was the first thing I noticed. I mean how could I not when I rebooted and get a kernel panic? I am running version 2.6.32.5 too GrapefruiTgirl so I am wondering why your kernel still labels ide drives as hd* while mine only uses sd*?

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Maybe it's my compile options (I mean, configuration of the kernel??)

It might be. I'm just using the generic slackware kernel: vmlinuz-generic-2.6.32.5.

I knew that was coming when I checked kernel.org. It's really quite reassuring to see how fast current gets updated!

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I believe the sd vs. hd change is to do with the kernel config and that the changes everyone has seen was in the slackware kernel config. In other words the config option for hdx is still available in the kernel source. The upshot of that would be if you were rolling your own kernel using a slackware .config previous to when pat made the change (or working totally from scratch) then you would be unaffected.

I'm not certain on this, just thought the last time I looked carefully at the kernel the old options were still available, but deprecated.

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All I know is that huge-2.6.29.x had IDE drivers included in the kernel. My EIDE drive was recognized as hdx. That was not the case with the 2.6.32.x kernel. It would not recognize the drive by the hd* identity. It only saw it as an sd* drive.

From the Slackware changelog:

I had to change my fstab entries for that hd* drive for it to work with the new kernel.

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It's definitely the options.

I always build my own kernels, but I work from Pat's .config as a starting point. If I work from an older .config and plug in defaults on new options, I still get hdx entries, even on the 2.6.32.7 kernel. If I use one of Pat's .config files from after the aforementioned entry in the changelog, everything is sdx.

The question is, does anyone reading these threads know enough to pinpoint for us which option(s) are responsible for the different implementations and what the real difference is?

I assume that, if Pat made the jump, there is some performance benefit from the newer way of configuring things. When he abandons tradition, it is usually for a boost in speed or reduction in memory usage.

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