# Linux 2.6.33 Kernel Impressions

## Shining Arcanine

So far, I have noticed that the CPU scheduler seems to have improved. My system feels more responsive under load and ksysguard charts seem to indicate that building packages better utilizes the CPU. With the previous kernel I used (gentoo-sources-2.6.31-r9), I had to emerge something on the order of 10 packages simultaneously with MAKEOPT="-j3" on my dual core processor to reach 100% CPU utilization, while with the new kernel (vanilla-sources-2.6.33), I only need to emerge one such package and the CPU utilization goes to 100% during the build phase.

Emerging packages feels a bit quicker, especially open office, although that could be more because ccache had already cached the compilation of open office before a change to the portage tree made portage want to rebuild it than because of the new kernel. I had reservations about I/O system regressions, but so far, I am not seeing any. It could be because I have nobarrier in fstab (my laptop never suffers power losses and I do regular backups). After seeing these improvements, I decided to build vanilla-sources-2.6.33 on a gentoo virtual machine I have on my Windows 7 desktop to replace gentoo-sources-2.6.31-r10. The virtual machine had issues with a laggy mouse pointer, despite having open-vm-tools installed. After upgrading to the new kernel, the mouse became lag free, although I can see visible tearing of the cursor if I move it around the virtual machine's screen too quickly, but I do not think that the Linux kernel can do anything about that.

All in all, I am really impressed by the improvements I can perceive.Last edited by Shining Arcanine on Sat Feb 27, 2010 4:52 am; edited 1 time in total

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## d2_racing

 *Shining Arcanine wrote:*   

> It could be because I have nobarrier in fstab (my laptop never suffers power losses and I do regular backups), but I am really impressed by the improvements I can perceive.

 

Are you using EXT3 or EXT4 ?

Also, are you using the new feature for EXT4 that remove the need to compile the ext2 and ext3 module too ?

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## Shining Arcanine

 *d2_racing wrote:*   

>  *Shining Arcanine wrote:*   It could be because I have nobarrier in fstab (my laptop never suffers power losses and I do regular backups), but I am really impressed by the improvements I can perceive. 
> 
> Are you using EXT3 or EXT4 ?
> 
> Also, are you using the new feature for EXT4 that remove the need to compile the ext2 and ext3 module too ?

 

I am using ext4 and I also have the feature that removes the need to compile the ext2 and ext3 modules compiled into the kernel as well. That feature is pointless for my system because I do not have any ext2 or ext3 formated partitions/media, but since it was practically free in terms of kernel bloat, I decided to compile the kernel with it in case anyone ever handed me a ext2/ext3 formatted USB key. That way I could write to it without introducing extents into their drive's filesystem, which would ruin backward compatibility.

By the way, I edited my original post because it was unclear. I am perceiving improvements in the CPU scheduler, but I am perceiving no change in the I/O scheduler in my daily use (starting, shutting down, launching programs), which is better than what I had expected.

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