See:

http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org/wiki/Main_Page

Shutting down red hat wouldn't work. The developers would just start a "Blue Hat" company and start building a distribution called "sombrero".

A example from Ethiopia:

http://flickr.com/photos/adavey/2868581353/in/set-72157607357696464/

Notice that Ethiopian orthodox church descents directly from the original Christian church in Judea, it was not brought into the country by west-european missionaries in later ages. They had over thousand years of tradition of painting Christian images without even knowing what white people look like.

or better to stick with the old and proven 2.4?

Linux 2.4 might be "proven" on your old Xscale system, but I doubt anyone else has even _tried_ to use Linux 2.4 on something as new as Atom. Linux 2.4 will also lack support for any of the peripherals of your Atom com module.