Or possibly I could be misunderstanding you. I just discovered there was a distribution called "Root Linux" but your post also said debian 2.6...
While Debian sarge, etch & lenny all use the 2.6 kernel series, the debian version numbers went right from 2.2 (potato) to 3.0 (woody). 3.1 is sarge and 4.0 (current stable) is etch.
If you are really running "Root Linux" I would just install a newer, easier distribution as "Root Linux" hasn't had a new release since 2005. If you've got at least 256mb ram I would recommend
Mepis.
If you are really running debian I would still do the dist-upgrade I recommended above.