Glibc 2 is the latest version of the GNU C Library. It currently runs unmodified on GNU Hurd systems and Linux i386, m68k, and alpha systems. Ports to Linux PowerPC, MIPS, and Sparc are actively being developed. In the future support for other architectures and operating systems will be added.
On Linux, glibc 2 is used as the libc with major version 6, the successor of the Linux libc 5. It is intended by the Linux libc developers to eventually replace libc 5. It is currently experimental, but is stable enough to be used by people interested in testing it and willing to put a little extra effort to get things working. The latest version is actually quite stable if the program you are using supports it.
There are three optional add-ons available for glibc 2:
The UFC-crypt package. It is seperate because of export restrictions.
An implementation of the Posix 1003.1c "pthread" interface.
Contains the data needed to build the locale data files to use the internationalization features of the glibc.
This HOWTO covers installing the glibc 2 library on an existing Linux system. It is tailored for users of Intel based systems currently using libc 5, but users of other systems and alternate libraries (such as glibc 1) should be able to use this information by substituting the proper filenames and architecture names in the appropriate places.
The latest copy of this HOWTO can be found at http://www.imaxx.net/~thrytis/glibc/Glibc2-HOWTO.html, or you can get a text version at http://www.imaxx.net/~thrytis/glibc/Glibc2-HOWTO.txt
Differences between version 0.9.1 and 1.0: