[carlosponti]

looks like Patrick is finally going to make 2.6 default in the next release.

http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20070319#news

[bryansmith]

Finally is right. It's nice to see that he will join us post-2003 (2.6.0 was released Dec 18/2003).

[carlosponti]

and after 20 *bleeping* revisions too! I could see maybe 2.6.5 being enough to switch but after that its a necessity

[bidi]

Wow! Sounds like he's going all out this time, upgrading to latest GCC, glibc and Xorg.

[a12ctic]

Hmm, makes you wonder if Patrick is still in complete control.

[jens]

Originally Posted by bidi

Wow! Sounds like he's going all out this time, upgrading to latest GCC, glibc and Xorg.

???
He already did that (Slack was even much more up to date than Redhat was, RHEL5 looks nice though).
Slack 11 also already had a working 2.6 kernel with its release.
If you plan to use Slackware, you just need to realize that it still works as it did before all the fancy Ubuntu/SuSE crap.

The main problem was that not everyone realized that your installation kernel does not necessarily needs to be one that will be installed on your system.

[bryansmith]

True, but what is the point of shipping a 2.4 by default - why not ship a 2.6 (like everyone else) by default and give people the choice of rolling back to a 2.4?

The issue here is his insistence to default to a 2.4 series kernel. Has the 2.6 series really not shown stability (I believe this was the issue for Patrick)? I would think that just about every other distro maintainer would disagree with Patrick on this one.

[jens]

Originally Posted by bryansmith

True, but what is the point of shipping a 2.4 by default - why not ship a 2.6 (like everyone else) by default and give people the choice of rolling back to a 2.4?

The issue here is his insistence to default to a 2.4 series kernel. Has the 2.6 series really not shown stability (I believe this was the issue for Patrick)? I would think that just about every other distro maintainer would disagree with Patrick on this one.

I doubt that.

Do you think it makes more sense to use a 2.6 kernel for the installer when the distro still includes both?
It really works easier this way.
2.6 comes with a lot of extra stuff that simply wouldn't work with a 2.4 kernel.

Dumping 2.4 completely is something different.

[bidi]

Originally Posted by jens

???
He already did that (Slack was even much more up to date than Redhat was, RHEL5 looks nice though).
Slack 11 also already had a working 2.6 kernel with its release.
If you plan to use Slackware, you just need to realize that it still works as it did before all the fancy Ubuntu/SuSE crap.

The main problem was that not everyone realized that your installation kernel does not necessarily needs to be one that will be installed on your system.

Well, RHEL4 was also release over 2 years ago and Slack 11 just a few months ago, yet it still had a 2.6 kernel!

The problem is that just because he packaged a 2.6 series doesn't means it works as well as the 2.4 either. I use Slackware daily, yet if I want a 2.6 kernel (which I don't generally need, so I use the 2.4.33.3 kernel) I have to either compile it or not use it. Even Patrick said that the 2.6 kernel he packaged would need work in order to work correctly. The fact still remains that he never gave it a chance! For some reason he keeps saying his servers don't work well with the 2.6, yet I've been running a file server with Debian Etch for months on a fairly old, desktop-class hardware (as opposed to server-class hardware) with no problems yet.

Patrick does great work with Slackware and it still is my second distro of choice (first being Debian) because of it's simplicity. Heck, I like it so much I've packaged GNUstep's libraries to work with Slack so that I, and others, could install it without having to build everything from source.

My comment arose from the fact that Slackware has slacked (no pun intended) when it came to an up-to-date toolchain. He took quite a leap going from what was packaged with Slack 11 and what will be in Slack 11.1!

[jens]

Originally Posted by bidi

Well, RHEL4 was also release over 2 years ago and Slack 11 just a few months ago, yet it still had a 2.6 kernel!

The problem is that just because he packaged a 2.6 series doesn't means it works as well as the 2.4 either. I use Slackware daily, yet if I want a 2.6 kernel (which I don't generally need, so I use the 2.4.33.3 kernel) I have to either compile it or not use it. Even Patrick said that the 2.6 kernel he packaged would need work in order to work correctly. The fact still remains that he never gave it a chance! For some reason he keeps saying his servers don't work well with the 2.6, yet I've been running a file server with Debian Etch for months on a fairly old, desktop-class hardware (as opposed to server-class hardware) with no problems yet.

Patrick does great work with Slackware and it still is my second distro of choice (first being Debian) because of it's simplicity. Heck, I like it so much I've packaged GNUstep's libraries to work with Slack so that I, and others, could install it without having to build everything from source.

My comment arose from the fact that Slackware has slacked (no pun intended) when it came to an up-to-date toolchain. He took quite a leap going from what was packaged with Slack 11 and what will be in Slack 11.1!

Slackware kernels have never been tuned as much as Debian and Redhat kernels. Slackware is simply build to work with everything.
I've personally always used the latest kernel from kernel.org in Slack.
I really can't say I ever had any problem using any kernel with it.

PS: I'll always run Debian on my main desktop though