Linux kernel 2.6.31 – Desktop speed enhancements and other improvements.

I was reading this morning how the new 2.6.31 kernel was released on the 10th and how it has several speed improvements implemented so I decided to give it a test run. I compiled the kernel from source in Ubuntu 9.04 32 bit (i386) using modified instructions from my previous post:

http://larmeir.com/2009/07/enabling-pae-on-a-32-bit-ubuntu-desktop-supporting-up-to-64-gb/

On first login I encountered a bit of a bug as my audio was showing Null in the volume control. The sound worked on boot and played at splash but crashed once GDM completed loading. I rebooted and then the issue went away and so far so good. Some of the improvements made with this kernel release are shown below:

“This version adds USB 3.0 support, a equivalent of FUSE for character devices used for proxying OSS sound to ALSA, some memory management changes that improve interactivity in desktops, readahead improvements, ATI Radeon Modesetting support, support for Intel’s Wireless Multicomm 3200 Wifi devices, kernel support and a userspace tool for performance counters, gcov support, a memory checker for unitialized memory, a memory leak detector, a reimplementation of inotify and dnotify on top of a new filesystem notification infrastructure, btrfs improvements, support for the IEEE 802.15.4 network standard, IPv4 over Firewire, many new drivers, small improvements and fixes.”

For a more in depth list go here:

http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_31

If anyone has any questions about my compilation process let me know  – Dustin