I can't answer your specific questions, but I will point out that the first attempt will probably not include very many major changes. Doing that would cause a nightmare for support, because they would have a lot more trouble trying to determine if it was something new that was causing a problem, or if the new install procedure caused the problem. From what I have seen, so far, some bugs have been squashed, what has been updated already will be included, and a few new tools have been created. Nothing major (except a new installer, which is not, yet, complete), but there are a few weeks left, and I hear that some new stuff is still to be added to the beta.
Don't expect miracles, this is a first step, after all. The miracles come later.
How about the memory problems. Does the new kernel flame out when the high memory runs out?
I will point out that the current high memory problems are not caused by "running out". It has something to do with unloading whatever needs to be unloaded. ECS 2.2b2 contains a partial fix for the problem. Low shared memory runs out, and programs (usually Firefox, in my case) seem to assume that that will never happen, so they just crash when it happens.