Free Software Linux

"HP has released AdvFS, a file system that was developed by Digital Equipment Corp and continues to be part of HP's Tru64 operating system," announced Xose Vazquez Perez, offering a link to the re-licensed source code. 2.4 maintainer Willy Tarreau replied favorably, "wow! That's awesome. I discovered it in 1999 and 9 years later, it probably remains the most advanced FS I encountered." HP's Linda Knippers explained:

"In case its not clear, this is a GPLv2 technology release, not an actual port to Linux. We're hoping that the code and documentation will be helpful in the development of new file systems for Linux that will provide similar capabilities, and perhaps used to make tweaks to existing file systems."

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In April, 2.4 kernel maintainer Willy Tarreau queried the Linux kernel mailing list regarding how the 2.4 kernel is still being used. He followed up summarizing the responses, suggesting that about 5% of 2.4 users run the kernel on old recycled laptops at home or on PDA's and thin clients, running whatever works with no real need to upgrade. Another 5% of the users are on desktop PCs and monitoring stations, not upgrading because "it works". From there, about 50% of the users run the 2.4 kernel on general purpose servers and update regularly, still running the older kernel due to lack of need for new features and lack of time, and possibly due to failed earlier attempts to upgrade. Another 20% use the 2.4 kernel on application specific servers where reliability is of the highest importance.

"New year, new kernel: Linux 2.4.36 is finally ready and has been checked long enough to be released. Quite a bunch of bugs, build errors and security issues have been fixed since 2.4.35, but all of those fixes were merged into 2.4.35-stable," 2.4 maintainer Willy Tarreau stated, announcing the latest 2.4 stable Linux kernel. He noted, "I should say that I'm quite satisfied of this dual-branch release model which proves to be very successful at separating quick fixes from changes which require more thorough testing." Willy went on to add:

"Concerning future versions, I have nothing pending in the queue anymore. I will then go on with 2.4.36.X when bug fixes come in, and only open 2.4.37 when I get something which I do not consider suitable for 2.4.36.X."

The previous 2.4.35 stable kernel was released in July of 2007. Source level changes can be viewed through the linux-2.4 gitweb interface.

"For the last release, I stated that I thought the 2.6.22.12 release would be the last one in the 2.6.22.y series. Since then, I've received a number of other patches that would be nice to have in the .22.y tree," explained Greg KH. He continued:

"So, for a while, I'll keep the 2.6.22.y tree open, doing new releases every once in a while as they accumulate. I do this, for no other than the selfish reason that I use it every day on my openSuSE 10.3 boxes as that is the kernel base that release is on :)"

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