Devfs usage

[Robb Bossley]

I understand that as of the 2.4 kernel, devfs is supposed to be the new way that the /dev directory is populated.  Is this correct?  Why the differences in the notation for different character devices, and should I manually do the mknod commands to create the old type notation devices, or the new notation devices?  I would like to set up a root filesystem to be used for a UML instance.