2.6.24 Zen Ubuntu Kernel - Faster, Stable, More Hardware Support

[Megaton]

Zen is moving along nicely..... Very, very good job. Also, I checked through my xconfig menus, under Device Drivers >> Network Device Support,
Ethernet (10 or 100 Mbit) was checked. Under the previous Zen config,
Ethernet (1000 Mbit) was not checked, the Broadcom chip I had listed earlier is under there. It is listed as Broadcom Tigon3 Support.

[dlpfmVfH]

Intermediary 64 Bit build (new):
http://www.mattparnell.com/zen/2.6.2.../intermediary/

Last build was somewhat crappy...and this one is better ACPI-wise, except it isn't powering off correctly and I have to turn it off the hard way...with the power button...

It is running nicely, except the acpi stuff, nvidia beta driver build and installs fine.

It is running at the moment, thank you for this kernel.

[bismark]

The guy I was talking to there is on Feisty Fawn, like I am so I was making a joke about the dangers of adding Gutsy Gibbon packages to Feisty Fawn. Personally though I don't find Gutsy to be very stable at all to be honest! I've been unable to get anything good out of it on my Inspiron 5100 any way. It seems that the xserver configuration used by Gutsy doesn't like my ATI Radeon 7500, so it is best for me if I stick with Feisty for now. Perhaps the other guy has his own reasons for sticking with Feisty?
--bornagainpenguin

I'm guessing I'm "the other guy". Yeah I'm sticking with Feisty for the time being. Unfortunately fellow coworkers with the same laptop model (Lenovo T60p) have tried to update to Gutsy and haven't had much luck. Fiesty works fine for me, Ijust would like to tweak the kernel a bit and speed it up. I'm not big on the newest eye candy stuff, though I do want fglrx to work.

When the ATI conflict is figured out with the zen sources I'm going to try to build it again.

[dlpfmVfH]

Just found out something strange,
I was running the new intermediate release,
with the new nvidia beta driver, all was working fine,
until my mouse suddenly freezes, keyboard was still working, but couldn't select anything with my mouse,

even tabs didn't work in gnome anymore, had to reboot, to the old kernel.

My mouse is connected via usb and using evdev to communicate with xorg.

I also couldn't find a decent dmesg output of the new kernel.

[ilikenwf]

Just found out something strange,
I was running the new intermediate release,
with the new nvidia beta driver, all was working fine,
until my mouse suddenly freezes, keyboard was still working, but couldn't select anything with my mouse,

even tabs didn't work in gnome anymore, had to reboot, to the old kernel.

My mouse is connected via usb and using evdev to communicate with xorg.

I also couldn't find a decent dmesg output of the new kernel.

Try using hwcursor or swcursor in xorg.conf....use the one you aren't currently using.

I have noticed that the nvidia beta driver is buggy for me too...i can't go into pure bash mode without the refresh rate being fubared.

[nagual]

I got the RC5 kernel installed but am having issues compiling the nvidia beta driver. Attached is a copy of the nvidia-installer.log Any help is appreciated.

[Megaton]

rc5-zen0 is compiled and setup on my machine. It works very well with all of my hardware and the nVidia beta driver seems to be working well. I get no strange errors, but dmesg doesn't work.


Nagual: I looked through that log, but am not sure what caused it to fail. What nVidia card do you have?

[nagual]

Geforce 6600. Megaton, could you pm me some insructions on compiling RC5-Zen0 from source?

[Megaton]

Posted here for anyone else to use and/or suggestions.

Fire up the all-powerful terminal
cd /usr/src
sudo -i
wget http://www.mattparnell.com/zen/2.6.2...5-zen0.tar.bz2
tar xvjf linux-2.6.24-rc5-zen0.tar.bz2
rm -rf linux && ln -s zen-sources linux
cd linux
cp /boot/config-`uname -r` .config && make oldconfig
make xconfig

Save your config and stop for a second.
If you have Zen deb's installed, use synaptic to do a complete removal
If you have any Zen .deb's in /usr/src, delete them. (rm -rf *.deb)
if you have a Zen folder in /lib/modules, remove it

make sure you are back in /usr/src/linux
INSTALL_MOD_STRIP=1 CONCURRENCY_LEVEL=4 CC="gcc-4.1 -Os -funit-at-a-time -mregparm=3" make-kpkg --initrd kernel_image kernel_headers
cd /lib/firmware
ln -s /lib/firmware/2.6.22-14-generic 2.6.24-rc5-zen0
ls (make sure the softlink is there)
cd /usr/src
dpkg -i *.deb

once they are installed:
gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
If it is good to go then exit, exit root, exit terminal, reboot (i take out quiet and splash on the kernel line)

choose the new zen kernel
at the login screen, hit ctrl+alt+f1
at this terminal, login
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop
cd (to the directory where you put NVIDIA-Linux****.run
sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux*****.run
after exit: sudo /etc/X11/xorg.conf to make sure all is well
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start
you should see an nVidia beta logo and the login screen

Remeber when starting and stopping the display manager, use yours:
gdm - gnome
kdm - kde
xdm - xfce

[ilikenwf]

I just built a new version, and all ACPI is working, including reboot...may have finally found another golden snapshot build...

I also wrote and submitted a couple of patches to Waninkoko to see if he will add them to the Zen set...one of them is an option to strip debugging symbols for everyone (for people who don't have automagic compile scripts like make-kpkg), and the other adds a 216hz clock interrupt option for quad-core users who want the supposedly optimal rate of 864hz total.

I can do patches...sometimes...but I am not the best at complicated shellscripts...so, here's what I can think of that a script would need in order for regular users to compile from source...

wget source and a generic config file from mattparnell.com/zen/
make sure current version of gcc, as well as other dependencies installed
 Ask user who cpu manufacturer is. Make appropriate change to .config
Ask user how many cores they have. Select appropriate hz option, and turn on/off SMP, hyperthreading, etc..
Ask user if they would like to make additional configuration changes, if so, run xconfig (so they can add/remove modules and such to reduce compile time)
Ask user if they want kernel headers, modules built...
Ask users if they are ready to build
Build the kernel using the concurrency option (and possibly mod strip if my current patch isn't accepted)
Ask if user wants debs installed
Install debs
Modify /boot/grub/menu.lst for tuxonice (ask user where swap location is)
Possbly ask user if they want to install nvidia or ati drivers...also, remind user to reboot into new kernel and make install ndiswrapper if need be...