“Linux creator Linus Torvalds announced the release of the
2.6.21 kernel, ‘if the goal for 2.6.20 was to be a stable release
(and it was), the goal for 2.6.21 is to have just survived the big
timer-related changes and some of the other surprises (just as an
example: we were apparently unlucky enough to hit what looks like a
previously unknown hardware errata in one of the ethernet drivers
that got updated etc).’ Regarding the the dynticks code which was
merged in -rc1 he said, ‘the big change during 2.6.21 is all the
timer changes to support a tickless system (and even with ticks,
more varied time sources). Thanks (when it no longer broke for lots
of people 😉 go to Thomas Gleixner and Ingo Molnar and a cadre of
testers and coders…'”