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

[Tod Harter]

Mmmmm, dunno. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about Linux in 
general, been building out Linux servers since pre-1.0 kernel days. I 
installed MDK 10.0 and in the course of getting fglrx to work did an 
entire custom kernel build. On 1.5 ghz P4 with a 7200 RPM ATA133 drive 
and lots of RAM I'd say (didn't time it exactly) kernel build time was 
in excess of 40 minutes. Granted I haven't hammered on optimizing the 
system yet, but BIOS settings are reasonable and hdparm shows typical 
performance numbers, its not like ATA is off in non-UDMA mode 
somewhere... With previous installs using the same chip on an ABIT BL7 
board under 2.4.22 I got CONSIDERABLY better overall performance, so 
there are very definitely some 'issues' with 2.6.x performance, at least 
on some hardware!

Alexander Gran wrote:

>Sorry, but my experiences are completely different.
>Some number:
>Fujustu dual xeon 3Ghz.
>compiletime for linux kernel with 2.4 was 8 minutes, with
>2.6 4 minutes.
>I suppose you have something configured wrong.
>
>Alex
>
>On Monday 22 March 2004 14:29, Tod Harter wrote:
>  
>
>>I have to agree. Overall the 2.6 kernel is NOT as stable as a good
>>2.4.20+ with whatever patches you need.I've found a lot of problems, and
>>they get worse when you turn on preemption. Audio and Video playback,
>>despite the theoretical promise of better scheduling and preemption seem
>>to be MUCH inferior. I can't even get XMMS to play an mp3 without
>>breaking up every time there is the slightest activity on the desktop,
>>and thats on a very high-end workstation, on the A20p its worse. Even
>>just general compute-intensive stuff like compiling a kernel seems to be
>>significantly slower on 2.6, so much for all the vaunted efficiency
>>improvements. Maybe in 6 months or so they'll have 2.6 tweaked up to
>>where it starts to show some advantages over 2.4, and maybe it already
>>will for certain types of loads, but I think I'm going back to 2.4.x
>>series on the desktop for a while...
>>
>>Steve Harris wrote:
>>    
>>
>
>  
>


-- 
Tod Harter
Principal Developer
TradeDesk Software
voice: 802 655 2777
tharter@giantelectronicbrain.com