What makes a production kernel?

[Eric Hattemer]

I know the rawhide kernels are more about testing and saying, "hey, 
would this day-old feature be cool to eventually put into production", 
but what's the philosophy on the FC2 kernel?  Has it already been 
decided that it will be an older version?  I haven't tried all of the 
new kernels, but neither the nvidia nor the savage X drivers have worked 
on any kernel I have tried since 2.6.3-1.118.  I know a lot of people 
have said, "Blame NVIDIA.  They don't come out with a new driver every 
week to match the way our kernels are changing", but I don't think this 
is a reasonable stance.  The nvidia module is widely used, and I think 
to say that FC2 doesn't support it may be a serious issue for some 
people.  I know most people don't care about the savage driver, but I 
wonder if a new one will ever be released.  I don't think its a good 
idea at this time to include a default kernel that isn't backward 
compatible in this respect to the older ones. 

-Eric Hattemer