[Wolves] Kernel 2.6

[Jon Masters]

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Old Dan wrote:

| I decided to try Kernel 2.6 (finally) on my laptop last night, so I took
| the cop-out's way of doing it and installed a kernel-image.

Which distribution image please.

| It is a real speed improvement isn't it?

The new Linux scheduler (which is not a clone of the Slowaris one, oh
no...) is a lot less braindead in common cases and the IO scheduling
again makes some reasonable assumptions for people on desktops by simply
delaying io operations sometimes. The scheduler is not O1 precisely -
the schedule main loop is O1 in its choice of which process to run next
time but this is because some calculations are now done elsewhere.

| mplayer no longer says 'Your system is TOO SLOW to play this'

This might even be a case of your IDE controller now using DMA where it
did not before or some simple change elsewhere. On the whole I
experience an improved sense of response from the desktop I use at home
but I do not overall rate the system as being "faster".

| when I'm playing video files and the whole system just feels faster,
| although I did notice with big processes

Define big processes please. The scheduler favours processes which are
nice and well behaved by rewarding them with augmented quata should they
not hog the CPU. It actually does this by tracking how long a process
spends sleeping as this is a hard metric to intentionally break.

| What the hell is the deal with the mouse though?  Surely if you now need
| to load a module the Debian kernel maintainer peeps could have inserted
| a 'remember you have to add psmouse to /etc/modules if you use a ps2
| mouse' or something to the config script.  Grrr.  That's ten minutes of
| my life I won't get back... :)

That is a debianism. Most Debian users I know build there own kernel,
and no, I do not use a package build to install my kernel - Debian have
some weirdisms with things like the kernel that I just plain cannot
agree with and find a lot less hassle when I do it myself.

| That said, other than that hiccup the upgrade went smooth as silk.

Good to hear that.

Let us know how you get on then.

Cheers,

Jon.
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