[ltp] Re: So what _is_ advantage of 2.6 kernel on a Thinkpad?

[Daniel Pittman]

On Sun, 21 Mar 2004, Mitch Maltenfort wrote:
> I've got a stable Debian 'testing' install (standard kernel 2.4.22) on
> my R32. I get hibernation, APM, USB, pretty much everything I want. 
> Only nuisances; slightly rough sound at high volume, and occasional
> sticky control, alt or shift.
> 
> The FAQ's on Kernel 2.6 are vague on what speed increases I should
> see, and a search on terms 2.6, kernel and thinkpad didn't help.

Mostly, you don't see /that/ much real-life speed increase by moving up
to a newer kernel. :)

> What sort of goodness has anyone with an R32 (or similar model) seen
> when they migrated to the newer kernel?

The biggest improvement that 2.6 has over 2.4, for me[1], is that it
polishes off a few "in-progress" bits of 2.4.  For example, the input
layer is nice and useful in 2.6, while it is pretty half-done in 2.4.

Likewise, some of the sysfs stuff like udev, the firmware loader and the
nicer cpufreq support are useful, but not that significant.


The new I/O scheduler is about the only real speed improvement, and it
doesn't show that much even on a laptop with pretty good throughput,
like my RAID-1 on 5400 RPM drives, even for reading.

     Daniel

Footnotes: 
[1]  A31p, and desktop hardware.

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