“Everyone, ranging from the techie anoraks who devote their free
time to helping develop the open source OS, to the hard-nosed
commercial distributors hoping to take it to the heart of the
enterprise, has greeted the new kernel with joy and relief, pending
a thorough road test.”
“But less certain is the response of the corporate user base
that the kernel has been so carefully groomed for. Nor is it
entirely clear exactly when usable 2.4-based products will be
available for them to deploy….”
“No doubt if Torvalds had decided to delay the new kernel by
another six months, we would have seen the first of these firms go
to the wall, taking with them Linux’s best chance of making the
enterprise grade.”
“Even so, the distributors can’t afford to rush things too much.
TurboLinux, for example, says it plans to make sure that its
forthcoming 2.4-based release can fully support mission-critical
applications, and it claims it will not considerreleasing anything
that falls short of that any quicker.”