In a widely anticipated move, Linux "headcase" Torvalds today announced the immediate availability of the most advanced Linux kernel to date, version 2.6.20.
Before downloading the actual new kernel, most avid kernel hackers have been involved in a 2-hour pre-kernel-compilation count-down, with some even spending the preceding week doing typing exercises and reciting PI to a thousand decimal places. The half-time entertainment is provided by randomly inserted trivial syntax errors that nerds are expected to fix at home before completing the compile, but most people actually seem to mostly enjoy watching the compile warnings, sponsored by Anheuser-Busch, scroll past. As ICD head analyst Walter Dickweed put it: "Releasing a new kernel on Superbowl Sunday means that the important 'pasty white nerd' constituency finally has something to do while the rest of the country sits comatose in front of their 65" plasma screens". Walter was immediately attacked for his racist and insensitive remarks by Geeks without Borders representative Marilyn vos Savant, who pointed out that not all of their members are either pasty nor white. "Some of them even shower!" she added, claiming that the constant stereotyping hurts nerds' standing in society. Geeks outside the US were just confused about the whole issue, and were heard wondering what the big hoopla was all about. Some of the more culturally aware of them were heard snickering about balls that weren't even round. Linus --- Shortlog since 2.6.20-rc7. Fixes, fixes. There's a full ChangeLog together with the tar-ball and patches, but let me just summarize it as: "A lot of stuff. All over. And KVM." I tried rather hard to make 2.6.20 largely a "stabilization release". Unlike a lot of kernels lately, there aren't really any big fundamental changes to some core infrastructure area, and while we always have bugs, I really am hoping that we fixed many more than we introduced. Have fun. And remember: the thousandth decimal is, of course, 9. There *will* be a test on this afterwards. Adrian Bunk (1): [NETFILTER]: nf_conntrack_h323: fix compile error with CONFIG_IPV6=m, CONFIG_NF_CONNTRACK_H323=y Al Viro (12): netxen patches fix frv headers_check mca_nmi_hook() can be called at any point ide section fixes endianness bug: ntohl() misspelled as >> 24 in fh_verify(). fork_idle() should be __cpuinit, not __devinit __crc_... is intended to be absolute efi_set_rtc_mmss() is not __init sanitize sections for sparc32 smp radio modems sitting on serial port are not for s390 uml-i386: fix build breakage with CONFIG_HIGHMEM fix rtl8150 Alan (3): pata_atiixp: propogate cable detection hack from drivers/ide to the new driver pata_via: Correct missing comments libata: Fix ata_busy_wait() kernel docs Andrew Morton (2): pci: remove warning messages revert blockdev direct io back to 2.6.19 version Auke Kok (1): e100: fix napi ifdefs removing needed code Avi Kivity (1): KVM: fix lockup on 32-bit intel hosts with nx disabled in the bios Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz (1): via82cxxx: fix typo ("cx7000" should be corrected to "cx700") Bob Breuer (1): [SPARC32]: Fix over-optimization by GCC near ip_fast_csum. Brian King (1): libata: Initialize nbytes for internal sg commands David C Somayajulu (1): [SCSI] qla4xxx: bug fixes Evgeniy Dushistov (1): MAINTAINERS: ufs entry Frédéric Riss (1): EFI x86: pass firmware call parameters on the stack Guillaume Chazarain (1): procfs: Fix listing of /proc/NOT_A_TGID/task Haavard Skinnemoen (1): Remove [EMAIL PROTECTED] from MAINTAINERS Jean Delvare (1): via quirk update Jeff Garzik (1): x86-64: define dma noncoherent API functions Jens Osterkamp (1): spidernet : fix memory leak in spider_net_stop John Keller (1): Altix: more ACPI PRT support Kai Makisara (1): [SCSI] st: A MTIOCTOP/MTWEOF within the early warning will cause the file number to be incorrect Ken Chen (1): aio: fix buggy put_ioctx call in aio_complete - v2 Lars Immisch (1): [NETFILTER]: SIP conntrack: fix skipping over user info in SIP headers Li Yewang (1): [IPV6]: fix BUG of ndisc_send_redirect() Linus Torvalds (3): Revert "[PATCH] mm: micro optimise zone_watermark_ok" Revert "[PATCH] fix typo in geode_configre()@cyrix.c" Linux 2.6.20 Magnus Damm (1): kexec: Avoid migration of already disabled irqs (ia64) Matthew Wilcox (1): [SCSI] Fix scsi_add_device() for async scanning Michael Chan (1): [BNX2]: PHY workaround for 5709 A0. Mike Frysinger (1): alpha: fix epoll syscall enumerations Nagendra Singh Tomar (1): [SCSI] sd: udev accessing an uninitialized scsi_disk field results in a crash Neil Horman (1): [IPV6]: Fix up some CONFIG typos Patrick McHardy (5): [NETFILTER]: xt_connbytes: fix division by zero [NETFILTER]: SIP conntrack: fix out of bounds memory access [NETFILTER]: xt_hashlimit: fix ip6tables dependency [NET_SCHED]: act_ipt: fix regression in ipt action [NETFILTER]: ctnetlink: fix compile failure with NF_CONNTRACK_MARK=n Peter Korsgaard (1): net/smc911x: match up spin lock/unlock Randy Dunlap (2): [MAINTAINERS]: netfilter@ is subscribers-only sysrq: showBlockedTasks is sysrq-W Tejun Heo (1): ahci/pata_jmicron: fix JMicron quirk Vlad Yasevich (1): [SCTP]: Force update of the rto when processing HB-ACK