What’s New on Linux Kernel 2.6.24 – (1)
Linux Kernel released a stable version 2.6.24. According to one of Linux Editor, Marius Nestor, The release is the hottest Linux kernel ever! Why? Several improvements are as following:
1. Improved CFS
Briefly, CFS allows you to safeguard your files in encrypted form in a normal directory. By using a key (or password, if you will), you temporarily decrypt your files to clear-text form for the window of time in which you need to work with them.
2. Add Tickless feature for x86-64?PPC?UML?ARM?MIPS architecture.
“The tickless kernel feature (CONFIG_NO_HZ) enables ‘on-demand’ timer interrupts: if there is no timer to be expired for say 1.5 seconds when the system goes idle, then the system will stay totally idle for 1.5 seconds. This should bring cooler CPUs and power savings: on our (x86) testboxes we have measured the effective IRQ rate to go from HZ to 1-2 timer interrupts per second.
“This feature is implemented by driving ‘low res timer wheel’ processing via special per-CPU high-res timers, which timers are reprogrammed to the next-low-res-timer-expires interval. This tickless-kernel design is SMP-safe in a natural way and has been developed on SMP systems from the beginning.”
3. Patch for Anti-fragmentation
The anti-fragmentation strategy has memory overhead. This patch allows
the strategy to be disabled for small memory systems or if it is known the
workload is suffering because of the strategy. It also acts to show where
the anti-frag strategy interacts with the standard buddy allocator.
4. New wireless drivers and configuration interface
(To Be Continued…)
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