What kernel should I use? Pros/Cons....

M$ISBS · 11-11-2006, 08:31 PM

I will be installing slack 11 from a disk I bought from slackware.com.

I am using 2.4 kernel now, What would be the upside of using 2.6, wireless support, DVD support?
Is 2.4 more secure?

Thanks.

suid0 · 11-11-2006, 10:10 PM

My suggestion to that is:
Only change your kernel version if a major bug is found on the version you are running or if you need a resource that is now supported in a new kernel version.
There are also another things like making your machine faster or boot faster but I think if you know how to do a good tuning of your 2.4.x, this won't be a problem.

uglydot · 11-11-2006, 10:46 PM

2.6 is faster. You can patch the 2.4 kernel and play with it a bit to make up the speed difference, but I find it far easier to just install the latest 2.6 and let it be happy.

M$ISBS · 11-12-2006, 10:23 AM

How is the 2.6 kernel faster? will I see kde come up faster? Do I need to compile a new kernel if I want to use 2.6? I have the store purchased slack 11.
Thanks.

tuxdev · 11-12-2006, 10:58 AM

2.6 has full udev support. Also, 2.6 is faster because of all the lockless and waitless process and resource management.

M$ISBS · 11-12-2006, 08:07 PM

What is udev support?

davidsrsb · 11-12-2006, 09:57 PM

2.6 has much finer grained process locking than 2.4, this makes 2.6 feel mor responsive on a basic PC.
If you have a dual core box, 2.6 is in a different league as 2.4 SMP is "crude"

allend · 11-13-2006, 08:07 AM

I find that the 2.6 kernel is much faster to boot and generally more responsive in operation on my old desktop box.
If you want to run versions of Wine later than 0.9.12, then you will need to run a 2.4 kernel that has been compiled with NPTL (Native Posix Thread Library) support (rather than the vanilla 2.4 kernel supplied in Slackware 11), or else use the 2.6 kernel that has NPTL support already enabled.
At work I administer several simple file and print servers. I am sticking with the 2.4 kernel on these boxes at this time as it is adequate to task and it has proven stability.

titopoquito · 11-13-2006, 08:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by M$ISBS

What is udev support?

udev is a replacement for devfs (which you have used with 2.4 kernel and which is no longer maintained). It is responsible for creating device links in /dev and sending udev events to the kernel's hotplug system so that the right kernel modules can be loaded for your hardware.

So to use kernel 2.6.x you need udev. The old hotplug system (a seperate package, is not the same as the kernel's hotplug system) and devfs are not used anymore.

Hit me if that is wrong in some part, but this is how I understand what udev is doing