Infoworld is running an article on the speed differences between kernel 2.4 and 2.6. it shows that 2.6.0 is upto 47% faster at serving static HTML files then 2.4.23, and up 22% faster on dynamic pages. 29% faster on MySQL database Tests, and 47% faster in samba. all are “up-to x% faster” depending on processor (Xeon, Itanium2 and opteron tested). nice read. check it out.