Any good reasons to still be running the 2.4.x Linux kernel?

[her209]

Other than compatibility with some software that will only work with 2.4.x?

 

[Nothinman]

That's a pretty good reason, although most apps shouldn't care about the kernel version unless they work directly with it, stuff like ipchains.

IIRC 2.4 is still a good bit smaller than 2.6 so if you need an extremely low footprint 2.4 might make more sense. But you'd need an extremely small device to warrant it IMO.

 

[Red Squirrel]

lol I just got a flashback of when 2.6 got released, it was quite a big one, and I remember it like yesterday. Where are they at now anyway, I'm guessing they must be working on 2.7 or 2.8?

 

[Kadarin]

This thread reminds me of when I migrated an existing Gentoo install from 2.4 to 2.6. That was fun.

 

[Nothinman]

lol I just got a flashback of when 2.6 got released, it was quite a big one, and I remember it like yesterday. Where are they at now anyway, I'm guessing they must be working on 2.7 or 2.8?

Nope. It'll be 2.6 indefinitely. There's no odd numbered dev branch anymore because all of the development is happening directly in 2.6. There's a handful of staging trees maintained by different devs that their major changes go into and once they're fairly stable they get pushed up to Linus' tree for inclusion. The idea is to have more, smaller changes incrementally included and put into the stable tree so that more people actually use and test them. Most people shy away from dev trees so the only people testing stuff before in 2.3 and 2.5 were other developers which limits your test cases a lot.

 

[lxskllr]

2.4x works better with the Asus P4P800SE MB. 2.6x is very unstable with that hardware, and is quirky.

 

[Colt45]

one of the routers I had didn't have a driver for the wifi for 2.6; so i had to stick with 2.4.

I think the lack of driver was related to broadcom being evil.

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

Other than compatibility with some software that will only work with 2.4.x?

Newer isn't always better and the 2.4 branch is extremely mature so if you need the compatability it's as good (or better depending on who you ask) as the 2.6 versions.

I believe the last kernel update i did looked more like an IP adress than a version number though.

 

[jhu]

I remember the 2.0 days and the 2.2 days way back when. I remember install Redhat and being pretty impressed about booting to a command-line. Then I installed Quake and played that. That was also back when I liked compiling my own kernels. Now I just don't care about doing that anymore.

 

[silverpig]

Nope. It'll be 2.6 indefinitely. There's no odd numbered dev branch anymore because all of the development is happening directly in 2.6. There's a handful of staging trees maintained by different devs that their major changes go into and once they're fairly stable they get pushed up to Linus' tree for inclusion. The idea is to have more, smaller changes incrementally included and put into the stable tree so that more people actually use and test them. Most people shy away from dev trees so the only people testing stuff before in 2.3 and 2.5 were other developers which limits your test cases a lot.

Hello linux-2.6.48.236-x86_64

 

[Nothinman]

Hello linux-2.6.48.236-x86_64

The kernel does have 4 numbers in the version now, but the x86_64 part there had to have been added by whoever built your kernel.

 

[Praetor]

Hello linux-2.6.48.236-x86_64

Whoah, either you've been taking a ride in the Delorean or the vBulletin has introduced timewarps from the future.

 

[silverpig]

The kernel does have 4 numbers in the version now, but the x86_64 part there had to have been added by whoever built your kernel.

Yeah I know. I probably could have left that part out. I was mostly trying to comment that the 2.6 part is pretty irrelevant now because it will (probably) never change.

 

[Nothinman]

Yeah I know. I probably could have left that part out. I was mostly trying to comment that the 2.6 part is pretty irrelevant now because it will (probably) never change.

Yea, last I saw (I don't follow lkml much these days) Linus straight up said that 2.7 won't happen until some significantly large enough change comes along that it can't be handled across a few minor releases. IIRC, for example 2.1 was forked because of SMP which meant the kernel's locking had to be completely redone.