The following is an excerpt from his e-mail to the Kernel Mailing List, Wednesday October 8, 2003:

The more interesting thing is that I and Andrew are trying to calm down development, and I do _not_ want to see patches that don't fix a real and clear bug. In other words, the 'cleanup and janitorial' stuff is on hold, and -test8 and then -test9 should be for _stability_ fixes only. In other words, this should calm things down so that by the end of October we can look at the state of 2.6.0 without having a lot of noise from 'not strictly necessary' stuff.

Version 2.6 of the Linux kernel is the first major stable release since version 2.4 was released in January 2001. Some of the anticipated features in version 2.6 that have been in development are:

• Improved performance of the Linux virtual memory (VM) subsystem.
• Improved device support including USB 2.0 support and Advanced Linux Sound Support (ALSA).
• Linux Virtual file system (VFS) improvements including the new namespace feature and many new file systems have been merged into the kernel these include, ext3, JFS, XFS and NFSv4.

Expectations for release of version 2.6 are later this year with “big iron” vendors like IBM hoping to ship products in Q1 or Q2 of 2004.

• Introducing the Linux 2.6 Kernel
• Open Source Development (This Article Is the Winner of PRSA 2003 Award in Excellence in Technology Journalism)
• 2.6 Kernel Out for Enterprise Testing
• Happy Birthday, Linus Benedict Torvalds
• Linux Desktop for the Masses is "10 Years" Away, Says Torvalds