From: torvalds@cc.helsinki.fi (Linus Torvalds)
Subject: [ANNOUNCE]: linux version 0.99
Originator: mdw@db.TC.Cornell.EDU
Keywords: kernel linux 0.99
Organization: University of Helsinki
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 19:38:12 GMT

Linux version 0.99 is now available at nic.funet.fi, in the directory
pub/OS/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus as both full source and patches against
0.98.6.  It will probably show up on the other major sites soon. 

NOTE!! The context diffs aren't very good.  The makefiles have changed,
and due to the new setup they changed radically enough that I couldn't
edit away the dependancy changes like I usually do.  This means that the
diffs are unlikely to patch cleanly, and I'd suggest people get the full
source unless you feel comfortable about patching by hand.  Also, if you
get the full source, I'd suggest you remove (or move elsewhere) all of
the old kernel to make sure you don't have any dead files from older
versions lying around. 

0.99 has no major new features: the NFS client code is now in the
standard distribution, and the kernel configuration has changed, but
most of the rest of the changes are fixes - especially the tcp code
should now be pretty stable (knock wood). 

Changes:

 - NFS is in. As are some stubs for the soud drivers, although it's only
   stubs right now.
 - various fixes around the place: the serial problems are hopefully
   gone, and there are patches to both TCP/IP and SCSI to make them more
   stable. 
 - Minor fixes: the keyboard buglet introduced in 0.98pl6 should be
   gone, and some other bugs are also corrected.  The optimized
   read-ahead code in the filesystems (and the raw device read code) was
   too complicated and seemed to have problems with bad blocks, so I
   rewrote it, and it should hopefully work correctly now (this may have
   been the reason "mkfs -c" didn't work in all cases).  Thanks for some
   good bug-reports I've gotten: I've tried to correct all the problems
   I got reports on. 
 - The kernel configuration has been re-thought: I decided to take
   advantage of the possibilities offered by GNU make etc.  This means
   that you no longer can compile the kernel using any other make, but
   there probably aren't many (if any) people doing that anyway.  This
   way I got rid of the extremely ugly SCSI setup, so it was probably
   worth it. 

To configure the kernel for your setup, do a

	make config

and answer the yes/no questions. After that, do a

	make dep

to make the dependencies match your setup.  After that you should still
go edit the top-level Makefile for some of the configuration information
as before, but the remaining config things are pretty simple.  Then you
can make the kernel with a simple "make Image". 

The new configuration utility (essentially a stupid shell script coupled
with some smarts in the Makefiles) tries to minimize compilations: if
you disable the SCSI code the scsi drivers won't even be compiled, much
less linked in.  This should be a win on slower machines.

NOTE!!! Use LILO-0.7 to load the 0.98pl5 and newer kernels: any older
version of lilo is liable to result in weird problems. 

		Linus

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