what difference do these kernels make? I know it's a basic question but I find it hard to fathom.
To be honest with 95% of kernel upgrades you wont notice any difference (unless you require a specific feature addition), except sometimes with things like extended driver support.
This specific kernel release though contains the new patched Completely Fair Scheduler, which
Sir Linus described as:
So I think this is firmly one of those "real improvement" patches. Good job. Group scheduling goes from "useful for some specific server loads" to "that's a killer feature".
So basically this is the first kernel in sometime that should hopefully offer a noticeable performance boost with multi tasking on desktops
(Hopefully it isn't all hype
)
Arch Linux has it in the testing repos hopefully wont be long till it hits stable