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The New Version of the Linux Kernel (2.2.x)
Juan Marcos Diez Esteban, Francisco Moya Fernández
February 1999
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After around a hundred versions of the 1.3 series, the Linux-pre 2.0
series was unveiled on May 12, 1996. We can take this to be the
official starting point for the development of the 2.1 series. Almost
two years of intense work and 132 unstable versions later, Linus
Torvalds, once again, froze the new kernel code to prepare the next
stable release. Last January 25, after nine pre-releases, the
long-awaited stable version of the Linux kernel 2.2.0 saw the light of
day.
When one considers that the first versions of Linux appeared just over
seven years ago, two years of development might seem like a long time.
Even Alan Cox, one of the most outstanding Linux programmers commented
in a recent
interview that he wanted
to dedicate less time to developing new features for the next stable
version, Linux 2.4. It is not easy to understand the reasons why Linus
decided to delay launching Linux 2.2. Perhaps it was a mixture of
prudence and the desire to include an enormous number of new features
that were being developed at the last moment (USB, PnP, PCMCIA, better
NFS, etc.).
The Linux kernel was already ported to different architectures since
the 2.0 version (Alpha, Intel x86, Motorola 68k, Mips, PowerPC and
Sparc). The latest version includes support for two new architectures
ARM and Sparc64 (Ultra). This strategy of diversification is an
important commitment to the future and assumes that with the
appearance of new families of processors there will be an ample
experience in different environments with distinct conditioning
factors (CISC/RISC, 32/64 bits, etc.). The development of a kernel for
a new processor (for example, the soon to be launched Intel Merced)
does not mean starting from scratch but rather having the support of
all this experience. The growing interest of Intel in Linux (which now
belongs to Linux International and its
recent investment in Redhat) should make this whole process easier.
The introduction of support for ARM during the development of Linux
2.0 caused an interesting phenomenon in the free software world: Corel
using Linux for its Netwinder and its pledge to distribute all the
associated software as Open Source. It is one of the first cases of a
commercial software company being more or less forced to use free
software for purely technical reasons. Linux was almost the only
reasonably stable complete kernel that worked on ARM. Moreover, the
acquisition of StrongARM by Intel implies a strong boost for this
architecture that shortly will dominate the markets where low
power consumption is necessary (laptops, palmtops, unventilated embedded
systems, etc.).
The model for creating free software and the speed with which
information is exchanged between developers and users makes for
constant revision and updating as needs be. The perfect example
highlighting this was when, just three days after the launching of
Linux 2.2.0, an error was detected in the subsystem for memory
management. To be more exact, it was in the munmap function, which is
responsible for freeing memory. The result was that any user could
reboot the system. Just 9 hours after it was detected, it had
been debugged and the revised version, 2.2.1, had been distributed. A
record for a technical support service!!
Next: New functionality and the
Up: OR Magazine
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Open Resources (www.openresources.com) Last updated: 1999-03-23
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