kernel 2.6.0

kernel 2.6.0 was released a while back, and i took a few days to try it out.

downloaded the kernel off kernel.org, untar|gzip and did a make menuconfig. select what's needed, save, make bzImage;make modules;make modules_install

then copied bzImage from arch/i386/boot to /boot/vmlinuz-2.6

also copied System.map to /boot/System.map-2.6

mkinitrd, just in case, changed grub.conf and booted the kernel.

here are some things i discovered that interest me.

• lvs is in the core kernel. noneed for any patches now. this will help with running LVS as a load balancer. haven't yet tried it with piranha, but i guess it will work.
• atmel wireless driver is built in too. haven't got this running yet, but will try tomorrow, or when i got some time.
• alsa. now this is a bit of a pain. haven;t dealt with this but some googling turns out a good reference.

  the doc also have some pointers with the sysfs that's news to me.

• support for synaptic mouse. now i can use it like in windows.
• the new iptables? haven't yet tested this thoroughly

all in all, i found the kernel spiffy (for the lack of a word :P). previously, chnaging between X and console would take a few seconds. now it works off the bat.

it's still more of a desktop environment, but i think i'll be using it for my server based install; and we'll see how it goes.