That's right, 2.4 should be here before the new year. The full story is available here - http://techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20001108S0008

Finally! It's great!

We'll have a kernel that can compete with Sun and Solaris!
I haven't seen much of it because the 2.3 series didn't run on my Toshiba PCI, but I expect a lot of the net network system (and hope there will be a new QoS interface on it ;).
But remember that the kernel is only a (verrrry important) part of the OS, and a new kernel doesn't mean a new OS. And till now the 2.2 series fullfilled all my needs. This new kernel might be great for server-purposes, or any system that has a lot (4 or more) processors, or is a router/filter/ppp-server (is this the correct word?), but for applications and simple networking the 2.2 kernels will work as good as the 2.4's.

This (upcoming) release is of course great for the publicity of Linux, and the OSses dirived from it, but for now I think the most important for free OSses is eliminating the barriers between the Disto's, organizing the documentation (what I have to say for Windows, It help system functions! When a new user tries to find something out in Gnome or KDE he is on his own!).

I hope this release will persue more companies to embrase Linux as an alternative for the commercial operating systems.


As soon as I installed Slackware on my PC, I'll try the latest test release on it, and I hope to be able to inform you all of the results.

Good luck Linus!

Matthieu Peeters