Subj : Re: Best Distro to test both 2.4 & 2.6 kernels? To : comp.os.linux From : Crashdamage Date : Tue Aug 10 2004 01:04 pm On 9 Aug 2004 21:07:03 -0700, Jo User wrote: > I'm looking for a newer distro (want all the latest packages) which > easily accomodates both 2.4 and 2.6 kernels. > Seems like this request is more difficult than it should be: the > latest gccs (3.3.3+) won't compile unpatched vanilla 2.4 kernels, > while many of the slightly older distros can be painful to bring up to > speed for 2.6 support (eg Mandrake 9.1, RH9.0) Mandrake 9.2 is 2.6 kernel-ready. 9.1 is definetely not. > I've tried MDK10.1 beta 1, but the distro in general has issues... Of course it has "issues". It's a very early - 1st - beta for a new release, and 10.1 will make the change away from Xfree86 to boot, so it's to be expected you would see some problems. Try using 9.2 and add the 2.6 kernel or 10.0 Official, the latest "stable" release. It's been pretty good for most users, includes 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, and most of the latest software, all for free. > ...and it is very flaky with anything but the shipped kernel. I'm sure you realize that major distros like Suse, Mandrake, Fedora, etc. all use pretty heavily patched kernels. Fedora takes this to a far point, Suse almost as much, Mandrake maybe a little less. Anyway, all of them will probably be a little "flaky" with a strictly vanilla kernel I suppose, I haven't tried it myself. On the other hand, Netraverse (Win4Lin) has had pretty good luck getting Mandrake 10.0 and other newer distros (though they test a lot on Mandrake) to run well on their basically 'vanilla' 2.6 kernels (which of course include the patch to enable Win4Lin, but no matter) with relatively minor changes. Well enough they no longer supply individual distro-specific kernels, just patched 'vanilla' kernels for all distros. Since those are well-tested and work well, if you want to use tested but *relatively* vanilla kernels instead of the very heavily-patched distro-supplied ones, you could try using the Netraverse kernels, which are available for free download. And Netraverse is very good about having the latest kernels patched and available for use. You could probably figure out how they did it. Don't ask me - I'm no kernel guru. Otherwise, maybe try Slackware....? -- Registered Linux user #266531 .