The disruptive -stable kernel

So, it is now official: ext4 started being developed, devfs won't be there on 2.6.18 Linux Kernel, and in an year we'll get full NTFS write support, thanks to Apple. So this is all good news, right? Well, for end-users perheaps. First, the work on maintaining a kernel tree for each distribution there is will be a pain to kernel package maintainers. That will affect end-users in some distros - I'm sure: this machine only runs 2.6.15 FC4 kernels, since 2.6.16 images won't give me sound support, and 2.6.17 images won't even boot... Now deal with migration from devfs to udev (or porting code from one version to another) and see the work summing up for those maintainers... The NTFS thingie is being well dealt, and the same with etx4 (at least for now), even if I think that those kind of developments should be made to a development kernel and not a so-called stable one... But this devfs thingie (anavoidable, I know, and it was announced long ago) is that kind of stuff I would expect in a middle version bump, not a minor version one. Of course that that's not possible anymore with the new development method... Well, I surely hope everything goes well, good luck to everyone and I really think that this three features are progress marks. So let's just see what happens...