When testing with "dd if=/dev/zero of=zero", 2.4.17-pre2 feels much
smoother than 2.4.16. My hardware:
AMD K7 1400 Mhz
512 MB RAM
VIA vt82c686b (rev 40) IDE UDMA100 controller
20 GB IDE disk (IBM?, /proc/ide/had/model says IC35L020AVER07-0)
Cheers,
Neil