"I'm trying to keep some external drivers up to date with the kernel, and the first two weeks after the release is the worst time for me. There is no way to distinguish the current git kernel from the latest release. It's only after rc1 is released that I can use the preprocessor to check LINUX_VERSION_CODE," explained Pavel Roskin, describing the ongoing effort to keep the out of tree MadWifi driver in sync with the latest released kernel. Rik Van Riel suggested:

"Consider this an incentive to submit your code for inclusion in the upstream kernel. Having all the common drivers integrated in the mainline kernel makes it much easier for users to use all their hardware, external drivers are not just a pain for the developers."

Pavel acknowledged, "the incentive has already worked for MadWifi, which has landed in the wireless-2.6 repository under the name 'ath5k'. Still, there is a lot of work to do, and some features won't appear in the kernel driver soon, partly because they rely on the chipset features that still need to be reverse engineered. " In response to Pavel's original question, Dave Jones noted that Fedora kernels treat the development between a major release and the first release candidate as "rc0".

Dave Jones currently lives in London, employed by SuSE as a Linux kernel hacker. In the past six months since he graduated from the University of Glamorgan he has gotten involved in an impressive range of kernel related projects, including Powertweak, x86info, OProfile and the Kernel Janitors Project. Additionally, he maintains a -dj patch for the 2.5 development kernel, helping to sync it with the stable 2.4 kernel as well as offering increased stability.