On a cold September day in 1991, Linus Torvalds released version 0.01 of the Linux kernel. Almost 12 years later, in June 2003 version 2.6 of the Linux kernel has been released. This is not an everyday release or a minor patched up 2.4. In fact, such are the expectations from this kernel that the Linux community is being urged to call it 3.0. There was a discussion in the kernel mailing list on the version number of the post 2.5 kernel – whether it would be 2.6 or is it good enough to be called 3.0. Some people especially Ingo Molnar, who is the author of the O(1) scheduler and new thread library felt that the improvements in speed are so tremendous in the kernel that it deserves to be called 3.0. But the general feeling is that unless there is an architectural change, changing the major version would be tagged a gimmick.

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By the release of version 2.6 of the Linux kernel an evolutionary change has been made in industry. That’s because with the onset of 64-bit architectures, the need for scalability rose by a few notches. Plus, there were many technological changes that happened after 2.4. USB 2.0, IBM’s JFS filesystem, and Bluetooth, are a few examples of this.

SO, WHAT’S NEW?

To put it in one word – lots. To make it simple, features are grouped as (1) Architecture, (2) Filesystems, (3) Networking, and (4) General (geeky features).

1. ARCHITECTURE.
2. FILE SYSTEMS.
3. NETWORKING.
4. GENERAL FEATURES.
5. APPENDIX.