To 2.6 or not to 2.6?

Message

Remillard · Post by **Remillard** » Mon Feb 02, 2004 12:44 am

Howdy,

I'm still collecting mass amounts of information about the install while I wait for the bloody box to show up. So today I'm considering the 2.6.1 kernel issue.

Coming from a blank harddrive with untested hardware (though nothing TOO exotic) would it be better to get a standard 2.4 kernel working, with X, and other miscellaneous environments working fine, and THEN try to migrate?

OR

Is it so much a hassle to migrate from 2.4 to 2.6 that I will be happier just starting with the newer kernel?

Like I said, the hardware isn't too exotic. As far as I can tell, the only issue may be nVidia drivers, or the madwifi drivers. The soundcard is in the sblive family, and the eth0 port is pretty basic.

Does anyone have any opinions or experience to share on this one?

Thanks!
Remillard

azlan · Post by **azlan** » Mon Feb 02, 2004 1:05 am

if you would have done a search on this subject you would have found a whole bunch of threads.

basically.....2.6 rocks!

Neje · Post by **Neje** » Mon Feb 02, 2004 2:57 am

I'd say go for the 2.6 kernel straight away. 2.6 kernels do some stuff a little differently, so if you can avoid having to "migrate", I say go for it. You know you want 2.6, so why wait

I hear the new nvidia drivers are 2.6-ready, too.

Neje

floffe · Post by **floffe** » Mon Feb 02, 2004 2:56 pm

Neje wrote:I'd say go for the 2.6 kernel straight away. 2.6 kernels do some stuff a little differently, so if you can avoid having to "migrate", I say go for it. You know you want 2.6, so why wait I hear the new nvidia drivers are 2.6-ready, too.

Neje

In portage, the nvidia-drivers have been working with 2.6 since I migrated, around the 15th Dec (2.6.0-test11). Someone was nice enough to update the ebuild to include a patch, and then it worked

rafael · Post by **rafael** » Mon Feb 02, 2004 2:58 pm

I don't see no reason why you should hang on to 2.4. My life's been basically much better after I migrated to 2.6

Suicidal · Post by **Suicidal** » Mon Feb 02, 2004 3:22 pm

Id say go 4 it. The biggest difference I have noticed is the performance whil compiling. In 2.4 you could really tell that a compile was going on in 2.6 the only time you can tell is if you try to play an open gl game. In 2.6 I am constantly compiling, browsing and listening to xmms at the same time.

So like stated earlier in this thread 2.6 basically rocks, It gets even better when compiled against 2.6 headers, although it still does break some builds

Remillard · Post by **Remillard** » Tue Feb 03, 2004 4:43 am

azlan wrote:if you would have done a search on this subject you would have found a whole bunch of threads.

basically.....2.6 rocks!

Thanks a lot guys. I appreciate the feedback. I HAVE been watching the 2.6.1 love release threads and the 2.4 to 2.6 HOWTO Documentation, but I hadn't seen any evaluations based on whether it was good for the first time install, versus trying to get something completely stable first and then moving slowly.

I think I'll give it a shot. I've always got 2.4 to fall back on if I really get stuck.

Thanks!
Remillard

Crashed_Again · Post by **Crashed_Again** » Tue Feb 03, 2004 6:43 am

If their was any doubt as to move to 2.6 from 2.4, this article should persuade you to go 2.6.

inode77 · Post by **inode77** » Tue Feb 03, 2004 9:23 am

Did you see (I used the offical 1.4 x86 stage tarball) that for bootstrapping (stage1 to stage2) there is a bootstrap.sh and a bootstrap-2.6.sh script. They have a difffernt size but I didn't look @ the details. I installed with the 2.6 script because I assumed if I'm only going to use the 2.6.x kernel I don't need the other scritpt. I worded, that's what I can say on my side (gentoo-dev-2.6.2-rc1 kernel). There are some differnces I noticed in the /etc directory concerning modules and their conf but nothing else. Maybe a diff and some time to look a the differences could help to make a decision.

moby dick · Post by **moby dick** » Thu Feb 05, 2004 9:28 am

I moved from 2.4 to 2.6 last night and it was one of the easiest, fastest and nicest migration I ever did.

If it is not too late I recommend you to use the 2.6. So you won't have to trouble with the problems of 2.4 AND the diffrent (but much smaller) problems in 2.6.

Try the gentoo-devel-kernel-2.6.2. It is pretty nice and works fine with the nvidia-kernel and nvidia-glx patch.

It has even support for the nforce2 chipset (finally!!!! )

good luck
M.

troyt · Post by **troyt** » Thu Feb 05, 2004 3:31 pm

I'd just like to chime in and say that if you have a motherboard with the nForce2 chipset, 2.6 is the way to go. I started using the 2.6 beta kernels just to get away from the grief I was having with v2.4 and my nForce2 chipset.

To 2.6 or not to 2.6?

To 2.6 or not to 2.6?

Motherboard counts too