“You are going to love Linux 2.4.”
“I’ve been using it since the release of 2.4.0-test4 (though
test6 regressed its support of my chipset due to a bug I hadn’t
encountered, so I skipped that one; I’m now happily using test8).
There has been a lot written about the great technical advances
(there are many) and when it will be released (I have no idea), so
I’m not going to write directly about either of those things.
Instead, this will be about what I’ve noticed as a user. I’ll not
consult the documentation as I write this. The impressions here are
the ones I have from building and using it in several
configurations over a couple of months.”
“I wasn’t drawn to the new kernel out of the desire for a
preview. As Eric S. Raymond has famously noted, programming in our
sphere is done because the programmer has an itch he or she wants
to scratch. I’d like to extend that — pre-release software is
installed by itchy users. My itch had to do with direct rendering
in my video card, and the only effective Calamine was Linux 2.3.99
or better. But now, after weeks with the new kernel candidates, the
video stuff has paled into the ‘oh yeah, that, too’ category.”