long term support, multiple kernels, etc

>  - we should look to see what RHEL and SUSE and Debian are using for
> their major server oriented releases. I think RHEL is due a release some
> time in the Dapper time frame, what will they be using? Effective
> collaboration and review of their work will help us find low hanging
> fruit, that is much easier to do if we're on the same upstream version.

I cannot speak to RHEL or SUSE, but as a former long time user of
Mandrake in a data center, I found its various kernel versions to
exist for good reasons, and it was even reasonably maintainable since
they all varied only slightly.

Mandrake corporate server 2.1 has the following kernel packages:
kernel-2.4.19.49mdk-1-1mdk.i586.rpm
kernel-enterprise-2.4.19.49mdk-1-1mdk.i586.rpm
kernel-secure-2.4.19.49mdk-1-1mdk.i586.rpm
kernel-smp-2.4.19.49mdk-1-1mdk.i586.rpm
and of course...
kernel-source-2.4.19-49mdk.i586.rpm

Each of these are subtle variations of the same base kernel built from
the same source package.

The plain named package has no SMP support and no himem (1G limit). 
"enterprise" is 686 optimized, has smp support and himem support to
4G.  "secure" has smp support and grsec support.  "smp" has smp
support (duh), but no himem.

Further details as well as all the variants for the desktop mandrake
version can be obtained from the wiki page:
http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/MdkKernel92

My familiarity is mostly from the older mandrake days.  I'm no longer
a systems administrator so I generally don't have to worry about these
things.  It still looks like all these things hold true in the latest
Mandrake releases.

I am moderately familiar with RHEL, although not as intimately as I
once was with Mandrake.  From what I recall, RHEL used a very similar
convention with nearly identical features.  I'd love to see Ubuntu
adopt a similar system for kernels with various features.

--
Jay R. Wren