[ltp] Alan Cox 2.4 PnP BIOS kernels

[Thomas Hood]

On Mon, 2004-01-05 at 22:22, S. Anthony Sequeira wrote:
> Does anyone know whether Alan Cox is still patching the 2.4 kernels for
> PnP BIOS.  The latest I have is 2.4.22-ac4.

I believe that all latter day 2.4-ac kernel sources include the
PnP BIOS driver code.  This is the old driver, not the one that
has been greatly reworked for Linux 2.6.

> Now that the 2.4 kernel is up 2.4.24, with no sign of the PnP BIOS in
> them, I feel trapped at 2.4.22.  I do not wish to move to 2.6 until the
> situation stabilises.
> 
> Is the PnP BIOS option absolutely necessary.  I see that Thomas Hood
> uses 2.4.23 (when I last checked).

Actually I upgraded to 2.4.24 and recently to 2.6.0.  Just today
I posted at http://panopticon.csustan.edu/thood/tp600lnx.htm a
summary of my upgrade steps.

I am very impressed with 2.6.0.  This isn't 2.4.0 all over again.
So far it has been running as stably as 2.4.24 did even though I
have been working it hard.  The only problem is APM suspend and
it sounds as if Michael Hagemann and Charles Lepple have almost
solved that one.

It is wonderful to be able to upgrade to 2.6 .  The new input
drivers.  ALSA.  PnP BIOS.  Preemption.  The new build system.
Better module handling.  The list goes on and on.  Altogether a
huge improvement over 2.4.  Some of these features were already
available for 2.4 but in most cases I decided that I would just
wait until I upgraded.  I am grateful that upgrading has been so
unpainful.  The biggest PITA was reverting from a devfs system
to a traditional /dev/ directory, but most people won't have to
go through that because they never adopted devfs.

> If I upgrade, will I be able to use tpctl and/or pcmcia-cs?

Yes, and if you have a 600X then there is also an ltmodem driver.

-- 
Thomas Hood <jdthood2@yahoo.co.uk>