!!!New Features 

  

 The 2.6 tree adds two features that can lead to signifigant performance gains. The first one is reverse mapping of physical to virtual memory, which provides a better solution for paging as the kernel can now reuse pages allocated for a particular task rather than having to reallocate each time said task requires swap. The second one allows processes to be preempted anywhere in the kernel which reduces the average response time to 1ms, meaning the kernel spends less time idle under pressure, and so visible performance is, under certain circumstances, greatly improved. Other cool things added in the new kernel include the merging of [ALSA], which has finally superceded OSS/Free] as the preferred sound driver for Linux. For those of you unfamiliar with the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, it beats down OSS in pretty much every respect, as well as adding support for multiple channel muxing on sound cards which support it, and supports a whole lot more chipsets then OSS could ever dream of doing. 

  

  

 !!!Caveat Emptor 

  

 It took kernel 2.4 about 14 patches and three different VM systems before a "stable" stable version. 2.6 has gone through several months of test kernels, but the design methodology still says "release it to primetime and let the users do the testing" (otherwise, no-one would!) Running a beta kernel is not reccomended for any server or otherwise important box. If in doubt, wait six months. It should be fine to run on a workstation until then. There are some cases, however, when a [RAID] or [SCSI] controller isn't supported by the 2.4 series kernels, so if you want to use one of them in a server, your best bet is upgrading (carefully) to 2.6.