🚀 go-pugleaf

Archive-name: auto/comp.os.linux/ANNOUNCE-linux-0-98-3

Ok, I already sent out an announcement last night, but due to the time
(6AM over here) I wasn't really in a mood to write a real annoucement. 
Here it is. 

linux-0.98.3 is available by anonymous ftp at least on nic.funet.fi:
pub/OS/Linux/testing/Linus, both as context diffs against 0.98.2 and the
pre-version of 0.98.3 and as complete source.  The complete source
package was done by directly applying the diffs - this means that the
Makefile dependancies are probably not 100% up-to-date as I remove those
from the diffs.  It shouldn't be any problem, and you can always do a
"make dep ; make clean" before actually compiling the kernel. 

0.98 pl3 fixes several bugs, and should remove all known NULL-pointer
problems that made 0.98.2 unusable for most people.  In addition to the
NULL pointer fixes, the following things have changed:

 - removed most of the cli-sti pairs in the filesystem code by rewriting
   the locking routines to use a different algorithm, possible due to
   the rewritten wait-queue code that I did back in 0.96c or so. 
   Interrupt latency should be better on slow machines, but I don't know
   if it's noticeable. 
 - Minor 387-emulation fixes by Bill Metzenthen - only noticeable under
   special conditions.
 - Corrected various error-returns in the fs (thanks to Bruce Evans for
   running some error diagnostics).  Error messages when opening (and
   renaming etc) files that had a non-directory in the path were wrong,
   and should be ok now (ie giving ENOTDIR instead of EACCESS or ENOENT). 
   Some other problems reported by Bruce fixed.
 - Changed the interface for some fs-related functions due to cleaning
   up super-block handling.  Most noticeably, iget() and related
   functions no longer specify the inode with a device and inode number,
   but instead with a super-block pointer and inode number.  This is
   more logical, and should make unnamed devices (ie internal
   filesystems like nfs and /proc) cleaner.  Also note that the calling
   sequence for sb->s_op->put_inode() also has changed since 0.98.  This
   is of interest only if you are writing filesystem drivers.. 
 - ASK_SVGA was broken in 0.98.2 - it should be ok now.

Also, various minor fixes as usual.  No new features, but I hope 0.98.3
will be a lot less bug-prone due to the changes since 0.98.1.  Some
minor tcp/ip corrections (but most of them were in the pre-release), and
I removed a race-condition in the tty-handling code. 

Note that people who use math without a co-processor should certainly
upgrade to 0.98.3: the new emulator is much better than my original one
both in speed and accuracy/exception handling.  x11perf is very much
bearable now even without a 387, and things like ray-tracing etc
shouldn't be a problem any more.  It's slower than hardware fp, of
course, but at least it works. 

The new emulator also means there is no reason for a separate soft-float
library, so I'd assume that will be gone in the next gcc release for
linux.

As usual, a new kernel version probably means you'll have to recompile
'ps' and friends.  But at least the same 'ps' sources that worked for
0.97.6 should still work. 

		Linus