Linux 2.2 Main Menu

If you prefer complete ready to run distributions the answer is probably no. All the major Linux vendors are working on new releases or upgrade packages for their existing distributions. One advantage of waiting is that you can be sure that the distribution makers have tested their complete system together and are happy. They are after all, putting their name, their pledge to support, and their business behind it.

If you want to play with 2.2, perhaps to evaluate or compatibility test it then the kernel package lists the system applications you need to update. Normal applications are intended to be unaffected by a 2.2 update. They'll probably run a little faster but that should be the only noticeable difference.

We have found two non system programs that break with 2.2 so far. They are x11amp and realplayer. In both cases the error comes from the application making assumptions. It would be wrong to blame vendors for this. Bugs that don't show up with a previous kernel are simply not possible to avoid occasionally. Certainly conventional quality testing of an application won't solve such things. You can expect updates to these applications to appear soon. In the case of realplayer some enterprising programmers have already produced workarounds.

If this all sounds negative it is because as an ex ISP person I come from the school of "If it aint broke don't fix it". There are lots of reasons to run 2.2.

Performance of Linux 2.2 with 16Mb or more RAM is noticeably superior. Comments like "It felt like I had upgraded the processor" are common. On multiprocessor machines the difference is very noticeable, with much enhanced scaling. The ultrasparc port (new in 2.2) scales well to 12 processors for general loads and supports up to 64.

The networking has been significantly advanced. The firewalling is far more flexible, the routing much more powerful and traffic/bandwidth management added that goes beyond the simple shaper device.

The TCP stack now supports all the latest TCP extensions for satellite links and for coping with high loss links. The first of these is TCP 'large window' support. It allows larger amounts of data to be "in flight" between two machines. Because satellite links have long delays this helps performance a great deal. The second facility is "selective ack" a scheme where the receiver can provide hints as to which packets were lost or arrived. Previously clever heuristics were used to avoid large numbers of excess retransmissions, now much of the information is available for real reducing resends. These facilities are being widely deployed by all vendors and will improve the behaviour of the entire internet.

New file systems are going to be useful to many in cross platform environments. Linux can now read disks from Acorn, Apple Mac, and Windows NT machines. The network file systems have also been expanded to include big file name and other Novell extensions. CODA provides an exciting new high performance network file service and NFS is much enhanced.

The NFS daemon has always been a weak point in Linux. 2.2 resolves this by adding an optional kernel mode NFS daemon. It trades a little of the flexibility of the old user NFS daemon for higher performance and massively enhanced scalability. Naturally the user mode NFS daemon can be used if you wish. Kernel nfsd is simply a new option.

The old IBM PS/2 architecture machines have for a long time been supported by additional "unofficial" patch kits. The 2.2 kernel folds the core MCA bus and PS/2 code into the kernel, along with several basic device drivers. These machines can be extremely cost effective low end boxes. The lack of support for them in current major vendors operating systems, along with the very solid build of the server systems means they frequently go for scrap value.

Linux 2.0 had some sound configuration problems. Changing the sound set up required recompiling the kernel - a formidable task to a non-technical end user, and an annoyance to all. In Linux 2.2 all the sound system is modular. Device configuration can be done after compilation. Users of Red Hat 5.2 will be familiar with these features and indeed Red Hat funded the initial work.

Support has been added for newer sound cards too. This includes the Ensoniq AudioPCI1370,1371, the S3 SonicVibes and the Soundblaster PCI64/128. Sadly Creative Labs are currently not providing any useable information on the Soundblaster Live! so this card is likely to remain unsupported. Several Turtle Beach cards also acquired Linux support during the 2.1 development, and support for the ESStech ISA cards was much extended.

To the user little has changed on the device driver front. This is partly because vendor provided drivers have targeted the 2.0 series kernels and partly because an aggressive backporting exercise has already back propagated all the "New in 2.1.x!" drivers into 2.0.

A similar thing happened with amateur radio stacks. The NetROM and ROSE protocol stacks got dropped into 2.0 as well as 2.1.x. The X.25 and LAP-B protocol stacks are new in 2.2. They are combined with a Cisco compatible HDLC layer and synchronous PPP stack for dumb synchronous controllers. Smart controllers get a look in as well with code based on work donated by Sangoma, one of the long standing Linux sync card providers.

On the local area networking scene both Gigabit ethernet and HIPPI first appear in 2.2.Gigabit support is also now in 2.0. The AppleTalk stack has Localtalk protocol support and also handles most of the common PC localtalk boards. Oddly enough the actual Macintosh onboard localtalk isnt supported yet. Supporting that requires a lot of clever and near real time code.