Linux kernel 2.6.14 release impacts nearly every architecture

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Oct. 28, 2005

Linux Torvalds has given his blessing at last to kernel 2.6.14, following delays caused by "false alarms," the Linux creator said in a message to the Linux kernel mailing list today. Torvalds plans to accept code merges for two weeks only, before freezing features for a 2.6.15 release candidate phase.

According to KernelTrap.org, Torvalds and other Linux developers at the Linux Kernel Summit in Ottawa this summer agreed to merge new code for only the first two weeks following each release. In his 2.6.14 announcement note, Torvalds wrote, "Let's try the two-week merge window thing again; I think it worked pretty well despite the delays, and hopefully it will work even better this time around."

Compared with 2.6.13, the 2.6.14 kernel includes changes "all over the place," Torvalds said when he froze 2.6.14 on Sept. 13th. KernelTrap reported at that time that the 2.6.14 tree includes changes to subsystems that include "drm, watchdog, hwmon, i2c, infiniband, input layer, md, dvb, v4l, pci, pcmcia, scsi, usb, sound driver, and network," as well as changes to the "alpha, ARM, x86, X86-64, PPC, IA64, MIPS, and sparc" trees.

One nice enhancement for laptop users is the addition of Centrino support in the standard kernel -- although in fairness, the ipw2xxx drivers have long been trivial to build and use with recent kernels, thanks to clever use of Linux's "hotplug" infrastructure that allows them to swap out Centrino cards' firmware whenever Linux boots (it reverts when powered down, so the card remains usable under other OSes).

Torvalds also noted that the FUSE filesystem was merged, while ntfs and xfs were updated. Changes were also made in the core VFS (virtual filesystem) layer. "The 'struct files' thing is now handled with RCU and has less expensive locking," he said.

The reiser4 filesystem was not merged, despite some hope that it would be.

More details can be found at Linux Weekly News and at KernelTrap.org.

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