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According to REP 103 (http://www.ros.org/reps/rep-0103.html) units in ROS should always be SI units. In this case, linearUpdate is in meters, as it is a distance traveled by the robot.

Setting this value lower will cause gmapping to update more frequently (say, every 0.25 or 0.5m of travel). Setting it to a higher number means less frequent updates. Less frequent updates are nice for reducing the memory/processor usage, however, if you have a short range laser or very poor odometry, it may cause the scan matcher to fail if the robot goes too far between updates.