Enterprise administrators need not fear that 2.6 kernel developers have compromised security in exchange for enterprise benchmarks. While vulnerabilities may be found -- for example, a serious flaw was recently discovered in the mremap memory management features in 2.4 and 2.6 -- the open source community reacts and patches quickly. I haven't seen security compromises in Linux, and I don't expect to see them.

Linux gets stronger with every kernel upgrade. And performance, reliability and security improvements lead every kernel wish list. Security, in fact, is at the top of most -- and 2.6 won't disappoint, as many of the strong features of Linux 2.4 have been improved in 2.6.

By Kenneth Milberg at Search Enterprise Linux.

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