I know this must be a difficult time to try to put out a release. Quite frankly, I wouldn't put out a beta or a release until I felt comfortable using 2.4 by default Enought stuff is different (dri manager, devfs, etc.) that a good chunk of the beta testing won't hit the new and important features. Said another way, you won't get good feedback on the new, improved, and possibly confusing features. Releasing a 7.0 with a 2.2 kernel would be horrible because you'd need an 8.0 as the next release.