As reported by eWEEK last week, the Linux production 2.6 kernel, expected to be released later this month, will move the operating system into a position of handling big, enterprise-class database applications by putting powerful new features and abilities into the main kernel and sparing users the need to adopt them as back-ported capabilities in the 2.4 production kernel. Such abilities include the ability to support much larger amounts of memory, the ability to support a larger number of threads, improved networking performance, increased storage and types of storage, and better volume management.