kernel? 2.4.x vs 2.6.x

["Colin J. Ingram" <cjingram@wisc.edu>]

debianers

Im about a month into my first debian system and Im fairly new to linux
also. (ive had some experience doing some number crunching on research
clusters)  Before I get to my question Id like to comment on my
experience so far.  

I first installed Woody from cd.  I had no problems with the installer.
 I can see how it maybe consider archaic but it didn't seem that bad to
me.(i have lots of technical experience though so I can see have it
could be hard for those w/o computer savvy)  I tried using both
bittorrent and direct ftp to download the cd images. I understand that
bittorrent releaves stress on servers, but the download was much slower
on my connection.  This must be improved for bittorrent to become a
viable option.  

I had very few problems with my initial install except when it came to
getting my Dlink DGE 530T network card functioning.  The driver is
sk98lin, but the provided module did not work out of the box.  I had to
compile a new kernel and then compile the driver(sk98lin) from
dlink.(note: this fails w.o custom kernel and I couldn't get syskonnects
driver to compile at all which googling suggested) This was all a good
experience (I planned on doing the kernel stuff anyway) and I don't
think that driver issue is a debian problem, but I wanted to mentioned
in case anyone else has this problem. (there is little doc. for this
card on net) 

I subscribed to the mailing list in the beginning and have been reading
it everyday.  Although I was able to fix allmost all my problems so far
with out a post(I have a couple of cosmetic issues to resolve...i will
post soon) the discussion has been very helpful.  Pat on the back to all
those who donate their time and knowledge to newbies like me.  This sort
of unconditional sharing is slowly disappearing in modern society(at
least in the US)

okay on to my question

Ive just done an apt-get dist-upgrade to sarge.  It is still running so
I don't know if it will be sucessful but I faith. (I have a minimal
install only setup to provide serves(file and print) w/o desktop or x)
Should I upgrade to a 2.6.x kernel? In other terms, its pool time! Do
you use 2.4.x or 2.6.x with sarge and why?  

Thanks in advanced 

Colin Ingram