From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux
Subject: 0.96 out next week
Date: 4 May 92 07:38:03 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki
Ok, the subject says most of it: I'll send out 0.96 sometimes next week
(ie 92.05.11-17), and this is just an announcement to confirm that.
0.96 has a lot of changes (even relative to pre-0.96), and it's entirely
possible that making it available as cdiffs isn't feasible. It contains
a lot of new files, as well as some re-organizations in the old ones.
Main new things are:
- The SCSI distribution is now in the standard package. I (obviously)
haven't been able to test my patchings, so there might be problems in
this first release. I had to do some changes "blind" to the cdiffs,
but most of them were pretty trivial.
- X11r5 as ported by obz is supported. It's still in beta-testing (join
the X11-channel on the original mailing-list), but as I'm writing this
from an xterm under linux, it works pretty well. Changes to pre-0.96
are just the socket-code by obz, and some small tweaking by me.
- Hopefully better interrupt latency - I've changed select() not to use
cli-sti, and most IRQ's to enable interrupts, and instead disable just
their own interrupt-line. The interrupt latency has been noticeable at
higher serial speeds, and I hope 0.96 will be better in this respect.
Again, I only have 2400bps, so I've never seen the problems, and
cannot guarantee the new version will help. (btw, I hope the problems
with select are gone now)
- Reorganisation of the vfs routines and minix filesystem driver. These
shouldn't bother anyone but people that have implemented their own
filesystems (I know of just 2 to date), but I hope the current
vfs-interface will prove to be relatively stable. The new vfs
interface has made some things much cleaner, and the promised cleanup
of special devices has happened.
- ps/uptime patches + added readahead, so having computationally
intensive background processes isn't as noticeable any more when doing
IO.
Additionally, there /might/ be a new floppy-driver that supports
formatting and autodetecting floppies, but I haven't had time to check
into it yet.
There are probably any number of minor changes: I've lost track. People
have sent me some diffs, and some of them went in, depending on how
energetic I was that day. I've tried to correct all the bugs I've
gotten reports on, and hopefully 0.96 will work with just about
everything (gdb etc).
Things I wanted, but didn't have time for:
- The config patches aren't there. Sorry everybody. That means still no
wd8003 driver etc.
- Any number of minor patches (quota, auto-SVGA etc)
Generally, 0.96 is cleaning some things up, but on the other hand the
new features can have their share of problems. We'll see. Anyway, most
things seem to work, and I hope there won't be the same type of problems
as with the first 0.95 release.
Linus
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