kernel upgrade anxiety

[Amadeus W. M.]

On Thu, 04 Aug 2005 22:41:23 -0700, Josh Coffman wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
>    So i've put a lot of work into getting FC4 running
> nicely on my laptop. I put off upgrading the kernel to
>  while I got stuff working. (This took time and effort
> because I'm a noob.)
> 
>    when I upgraded to 2.6.12-1.1390_FC4, I had a
> couple things to re-make and install: nvidia drivers,
> ndiswrapper...
> 
>    Although I took decent notes, I'm unsure about
> upgrading now that it's working. What are the
> pro's/con's of updating your kernel?
> 
> Thanks,
> -j
> 

A new kernel contains security or bug fixes, or new features such as
drivers for new devices. In the old times of RH, you could go to the RH
updates page, and see what each upgrade did, and whether it was a security
fix (hence urgent), or a regular bug. Not anymore with fedora, so you'd
better upgrade the kernel. The old one remains in place for as long as you
want, normally until you're done tweaking the new one. Yes, I hate nvidia
for this exact reason, that I have to re-compile the driver each time I
upgrade the kernel. But that's about all I need to do on nvidia machines.
And it's usually straightforward with the installer they provide.