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How To Upgrade Linux To The 2.6 Kernel
An anonymous reader writes "Here's a good computer project for the long labor-day weekend. KernelTrap has posted a howto detailing eight steps to upgrade your GNU/Linux OS from the 2.4 stable kernel to the 2.6.0-test development kernel. Complete with screen shots, the end result sounds to be well worth the effort." Since chances are most people will be upgrading anyway once 2.6 is deemed release-worthy, it's always worth learning the upgrade procedure well.
Bollocks, those steps are only intended for those who want to try the BETA kernel. End users will just use whatever kernel is provided by their distribution, and won't have to deal with any of that shit.
Don't forget that this is a lowest common denominator tutorial. The only people who will upgrade this way are hard-core geeks. Debian users will simply use apt to grab a package containing the latest kernel, RedHat users will use up2date to do the same thing. Of course the easiest way of upgrading will probably be to pop a RedHat 10 (or whatever) CD in your drive and click on the upgrade button...
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The one thing not mentioned in the article, and the one thing that has me nervous about trying 2.6-test is the changes to alsa. With 2.6, alsa is built into the kernel, so presumably this makes it easier to set up in the first place. But I already have alsa set up perfectly in 2.4, complete with OSS emulation and artsd sound mixing, so that all my apps play nice and just work. How much deconfiguring and reconfiguring am I going to have to do if I'm going to be jumping back and forth between 2.4 and a possibly unstable 2.6? Especially since I have the rather finicky via82xx driver. I'm really keen to try out 2.6, but not if I end up breaking sound in the process.
Yes, I've seen this problem a lot. People are comparing the ease of use of Windows to the ease of use of Gentoo or similar, in which case Windows is a whole lot easier (don't get me wrong, I love Gentoo). If you're going to compare the ease of use of Windows with linux, compare it with a distro that's designed for ease of use, like Mandrake.
The Tao says: the perfect piece of paper is unmarked by pen; the perfect flower is unpruned by shears; the perfect operating system is untouched from its default installation.
I've had to support, debug, fix, and otherwise un-screw-up many computers in my time. Inevitably, the closer a system is to what everybody else is using, the more likely it is that any problems with it will have been seen and solved countless times before.
That's why the idea of countless legions of users out there each recompiling his own kernel just makes my blood run cold. This is the twenty-first century, peoples! Why is it necessary for anyone other than a kernel developer to compile the kernel sources? Why haven't all the optional pieces been broken out into modules yet?