For various reasons, I am staying with 7.5 for a while longer.

I am considering updating to kernel 2.6.26 (because I need support for the CS46xx audio chip and I've not been able to buiild ALSA on the limited resources of my machine (256 MB RAM and 5 GB disk)).

While it appears I can easily get a ready to use Debian kernel, I am wondering if there would be an advantage to requesting a MEPIS 2.6.26 kernel over on the mepislovers forums.

Any thoughts?

I've installed debian and liquorix kernels using smxi. There's an archive of older kernels. Perhaps the one you are looking for is available. In which case, adding the kernel with smxi might be the best option.
I hope this helps.
Pedro

P.S. By the way, both Debian and Mepis kernels worked fine for me. I was using Debian for a long time (over Mepis) since it was picking up my wireless and Mepis wouldn't. Try them both, if you have the opportunity.

The cs46xx cards probably won't work under the debian kernel either because of Debian's free software policy. The best option is probably a Liquorix kernel. Any of them can be installed with smxi. I would check first that the driver is there before installing although it should be easy to load anytime.