Site News :: Current Issues &
Current Issues & Road Map Ahead
John and I have been discussing the current issues that have appeared in the forums.
We wish to share with the community our plans to deal with them and what's ahead.
We knew by moving to 2.4.31 kernel that there would be many challenges, especially
since it is to difficult to know in advance that all existing hardware would be well
supported. Having very limited resources to test such, we could only build it and
let the community give us feedback. Which you have provided.
It is apparent from feedback in many of the forum threads that we have lost more hardware
support than we would have expected. It is also apparent that we have not gained much at
all with this move.
We thought that by providing full sources the community would help in building the necessary
needed modules to support missing or lost hardware devices. This too has become apparently
not such an easy task. The final incident occurred when we learned that the atmelwanlan drivers
requires a non smp kernel. This is something that is totally outside of our control.
It is our conclusion that this move to 2.4.31 kernel is trying to accomplish too much.
By trying to maintain support for older hardware and at the same time trying to support
some of the newest hardware, we end up with a hybrid. One that apparently does not do a go
job of supporting either old or new.
Therefore, we have decided, that the next version of DSL v2.2 will be based on the kernel
and modules of DSL v1.5. Most of the feedback has been "that it worked in 1.5".
To address the issues of the newer hardware, we are announcing an additional version of DSL to
be based on 2.6 kernel. The exact date and exact size of which is to be determined.
We also have in planning an even smaller version of DSL which will be based on 2.4.26 kernel.
We appreciate the community in providing feedback and helping in the many ways you do.
John and I have much work ahead to provide a better DSL experience.
We both look forward to your continued support and participation.
So I assume the old nvidia driver will once again work in 2.2?
What about ltmodem support? If not, I think i still have Stinky's mydsl package he made for DSL1.5
The "even smaller version of DSL" sounds like something I will really enjoy.
Sounds like a good idea.
It might become tough for you to juggle updates to multiple versions as time goes on but this sounds like a resonable starting point. Perhaps there is only need for two or three 'dot-something' updates for each version per year.
No matter what... Thanks go out to you, John and the entire DSL community for a fun ride so far.
You guys are awesome thanks for a great distro to use on my old 366mhz trashtop. It had dust on it before DSL came along, now its my favorite puter for email, internet and music... i have a patch cable that lets me jack it into my nice home theatre and let xmms rock the house 
Anyway hope maintaning 2 seperat forks is not to overwhelming, I'm noob, but I'll keep workin on my skills and see if i can't contribute something someday soon.
Rob
Will there be any changes in the apps of the versions for older and newer hardware?
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