“Linux Kernel 2.4 was seemingly written with the server in mind.
Many of the old limits which prevented Linux adoption in the
“enterprise” market have been lifted. Performance problems
highlighted by the infamous Mindcraft Benchmark have been removed.
More file systems and partitions types are supported, even NFS has
been moderately improved. SMB support has continued to rock with
the help of the SAMBA team.”
“One important feature important to many database admins, is the
removal of the 2 gigabyte file size limit. It is harder to pin down
many other limits, as they vary based on the architecture the
kernel is running on. For instance, under the Intel platform, Linux
2.4 now supports up to 64 gigabytes of RAM. Process and user ID
limits have also been raised.”
“Logical Volume Management (LVM) support is now available with
the latest kernels. With LVM, an extra abstraction layer is added
to file system management, allowing “virtual partitions” or a
logical volume to be dynamically created and re-sized. If you’ve
ever been a system administrator who has suddenly found that the
partition you created for /home is now too small, LVM is for you.
LVM is a defacto UNIX standard, and with 2.4, Linux grows up in the
eyes of many seasoned admins.”