[linux-audio-dev] kernel 2.6.6 just out

[Robert Jonsson]

On Wednesday 12 May 2004 10.25, Jens M Andreasen wrote:
> On mån, 2004-05-10 at 18:05, eviltwin69 at cableone.net wrote:
> > Good question.  I had already read that and was curious myself.  Also,
> > how about 2.6.6-mm1?  I want to upgrade to Fedora Core 2 and a new kernel
> > so I can quit pissing off Paul D. and the guys with my 2.96 gcc ;-)
>
> On a related question: I went to town today and saw that for ~15 euro I
> can get a magazine with either Mandrake 10 (Community) or SuSE (Tech
> Review) as a bonus CD.
>
> Both are kernel 2.6.x with ALSA "out of the box" (I believe?), but which
> one should I choose?

Okay, the fight is on! ;-)

Being a long time user of Mandrake only, I can not vouch for the usability of 
Suse. I am however using Mandrake 10 in multiple installations right now so I 
thought I would comment.

A point list of bad things:
- For audio work the bundled 2.6 kernel is not good enough.
- I also had problems with the the one that thac released (rpm.nyvalls.se)
  so I downgraded to kernel-multimedia-2.4.22.21mm.2mdk-1-1mdk, which works
  just fine. Now I see that thac has released new 2.6 kernels which maybe
  are better... I will try on a rainy day.
- 10 is supposed to have very good usb support, which was not quite what I
  have experienced. It appears to be kernel problems though, when I downgraded
  the kernel my usb stuff started to work (keyboard and mouse, before you ask, 
YES I had a standard PS2 keyboard connected, my brainwaves was not strong 
enough to control it, though I tried.)

The good things (more generic):
- Mandrake tends (in my opinion) to favour freshness above stability.
  in my book this is only for the good, no stale packages, everything is 
  up to date.
- New packages appear swiftly and are freely available at a number of 
  repositories, this is a real boon.
- The config tools get better and better for each release, I don't recall
  having any problems with them in the current release (oh maybe with the
  printer now that I come to think of it)

That is all, awaiting counter attack. ;)
/Robert