We're getting Linux 3.0. The kernel is not a revolutionary change, but we welcome the moniker change. It's apt for Linux's 20th birthday, and the older 2.6 naming scheme became complicated. It became like my second phone number.

It's hard to make revolutionary changes, especially when you have the open-source community making so many contributions. Just like a democratic political process, the changes are going to be incremental, but user driven. That's why free software is so good.

So what are the big changes?

"NOTHING. Absolutely nothing," said Linus Torvalds, in the LKML mailing list. He goes on a giant dictatorial ego trip on how great he is a Linux founder, and threatens free developers to write good drivers and software. Not a way to treat people who are helping him out.

The giant changes will be around drivers, with new and shiny ones written up for the new hardware, devices, software and other connectors.  Other updates include:

- VFS cleanup

- VM fixes (better virtualization)

- ARM consolidation (so better support for non-x86 devices)

- An update to Xen, with the ability to run as primary layer

- UEFI support, can work on devices with the new BIOS, much like the UEFI BIOS used in Apple Macs

-  New JIT compilers for faster network packet inspection, new WLAN wakeup capabilities

These are just some of many minor updates.

To those curious, most of the changes to Linux 3.0 were made by a Microsoft developer. Does anyone care? Perhaps not. Most of the Linux developers need to have a day job.