On Tue, 2006-11-14 at 10:46 -0500, Ric Moore wrote: > > I think it was Les Mikesell that was wondering why everyone is upgrading > > their kernel every time a new one comes out, it's actually a good > > question if you don't have a new chipset or something that is barely > > working on the cutting edge stuff. Maybe the better solution is to just > > not update your kernel until you hear about a security problem or a > > feature that will do you some good. Or only run in-tree drivers if you > > can (I can't). > > I've made up my mind to do just that. This thing is working just fine, > my modules are made, my webcam finally works and I'm leaving it as it > is! Boo yah, Ric I think you are missing my original point, which was not that I don't want bugfix updates regularly, but that I don't ever want an untested, experimental kernel -ever- once I have one that works correctly with a given piece of hardware. With fedora, even if they stopped pushing out changes like the one that broke firewire drives for months or whatever it is that has kept FC5 from booting on an IBM 225 xserve for the last several kernels, a version only lasts for 6 months to a year. The problems during yum updates aren't all that hard to deal with, since yum doesn't remove your running kernel and you can recover by selecting it from the grub menu after the updated kernel fails. The big problem is that the computer is going to outlive that fedora version and the next version that you have to install is going to have something new, different and not necessarily better for that hardware, and you have to install it if you want current versions of evolution and firefox. The unix system interface that Linux set out to emulate has been pretty stable for 20-odd years. I don't see why updating applications has to drag along a new kernel and device drivers to machines with no new devices. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
