On 12/28/06, John Andersen <jsa@pen.homeip.net> wrote: <snip>
Kernel development has slowed down somewhat and having new releases as frequently as in the past seems less needed.
I've been following the IDE/Sata kernel mailing list for the last 3 or 4 years. In this very important area of the 2.6.18+ kernels, I have seen the most aggressive and rapid changes I have seen in that time. You may recall the whole 2.6 kernel was delayed for an extended period due to the poor quality of the IDE subsystem. It was finally released, but the subsystem was never brought up to the quality the core kernel team wanted. That subsystem is finally in the process of being upgraded to the quality we all want from a 2.6 kernel. 2.6.18 New (from scratch) SATA error handling (EH) 2.6.19 Experimental implementation of most PATA (ide) drivers within the SATA control structure. Utilizes the new EH. 2.6.20 (in test/debug cycle now) Major bug fixes to the above, especially related to ATAPI devices (ie. CD/DVD drives). Hopefully a new Promise SATA driver that uses the above. (I don't remember if this was submitted to Linus yet or not. It is definitely in the libata R&D code base.) 2.6.21 (planned) New core libata code to manage i/o resources. Apparently in the current code each low level driver has to manage a set of resources in a consistent way. Failure to do so causes i/o resource leaks. This is particularly important in a hotswap environment like Sata/eSata. I'm not saying that opensuse needs to have a new release every time there is a new kernel release, but I do look forward to each new release primarily due to the new kernel that comes with it. FYI: Yes I have used vanilla kernels and I'm aware I can typically use a "factory" kernel as well. Since disk driver stability is one of goals I prefer to use only the official suse kernels on most of my machines. Only on a test machine here or there do I use vanilla and/or factory kernels. Greg -- Greg Freemyer The Norcross Group Forensics for the 21st Century -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org