commercial distros with 2.6 should start appearing in the fall.
Will it make Linux faster? Faster than it is already?
IIRC, it is supposed to make it feel faster.
From http://www.kerneltrap.org/node.php?id=603&PHPSESSID=dd9c64e909d2094470bd0c4bffbdce5b
Andrew Morton summarized, ""Ingo's combo patch is better still - that is sched-2.5.64-a5 and your patch combined (yes?). The slight mouse jerkiness is gone and even when doing really silly things I cannot make it misbehave at all. I'd handwavingly describe both your patch and sched-2.5.64-a5 as 80% solutions, and the combo 95%." Robert Love [interview] agreed, "This is great for me, too. I played around with some mp3 playing and did the akpm-window-wiggle test. It is definitely the smoothest."
The big thing about 2.6 has to do with data-center class servers. i.e. More SMP, new LVM, NFS 4, eliminating the 2 TB block device limit, etc. Greg -- Greg Freemyer