Joe Pranevich has written the definitive exposition about what's new in Linux kernel 2.4. This 7,000+ word document contains detailed descriptions and assessments of all substantial changes relative to kernel 2.2. Pranevich writes . . .

“In the beginning, there was Linus and his 386. For reasons far too complicated to be discussed here, he decided not to use the commonly available operating system of the time and instead decided to write his own. Several years and many thousands of lines of code later, Linux 2.2 was released. Linux 2.2 was a milestone in and of itself and I wrote an article about it, which I am quite happy with. Unfortunately for me however (and fortunately for the rest of the world), Linus and company continued to hack away at the Linux OS and the 2.4 release of the Linux kernel is nearing completion. This document describes some of the new features in Linux 2.4.”

“Linux 2.4.0 was released without much fanfare on January 4th, 2001. Although it has often been criticized for tardiness, the Linux kernel adheres to the Open Source philosophy of releasing code when it is ready. (Development snapshots have been made available weekly for interested parties.) As the kernel is generally only a small piece of a much larger Linux Operating System, the major distribution vendors will likely not be packaging it standard for several months yes.”

“In this document, I have attempted to bring attention to areas where Linux 2.4 is not compatible with Linux 2.2. As this is a major release, the developers have taken this time to refine existing APIs (application programming interfaces) and other structures to make the system more cohesive. This process will almost definitely break any program that relies on an intimate knowledge of the kernel (such as the PPP daemon) but many other programs may be affected . . .”

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