[Cialug] The kernel and my hard drive

[Nathan C. Smith]

> Not so important.  Every once in a while, you might run into 
> a problem with a certain driver or such that you could fix by 
> updating your kernel.  But these are rare.  Your driving 
> motto for updating the kernel should be, "When my distro does 
> it for me."
> 
> > When the new version of Ubuntu, 7.04, comes out, is it to 
> my benefit 
> > to upgrade to that

Maybe somebody will correct me on this, but here is my take:

There is a possibility that your distro installed a "lesser" kernel than
what your machine can use.  You may have a i386 plain kernel when your
machine could support a multiprocessor kernel compiled for i686.  You can
see what kernel you are running like this:

# uname -a
Linux horologium 2.6.15-27-386 #1 PREEMPT Fri Dec 8 17:51:56 UTC 2006 i686
GNU/Linux

This one of my mini-itx machines.

~# uname -a
Linux openpbx 2.6.15-27-686 #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Dec 8 18:00:07 UTC 2006 i686
GNU/Linux

This is a multiprocessor machine.

Apparently newer versions of ubuntu have a "generic" kernel that replaces
the multiprocessor and i686 kernels.  I had to load the Ubuntu "generic"
kernel on a new core duo machine to replace the i386 kernel and take
advantage of the dual core processor.  Debian does a nice lowest common
denominator kernel install.

To update your kernel type you will have to learn how to mess with GRUB
without shooting yourself in the foot, and learn your way around apt or
aptitude.  Perhaps best done on a machine you can play with and/or break.
And as long as your machine is running and your kernel works, there is no
pressing need to tweak it.

-Nate