[NCLUG] Fedora 6 and the RaLink rt2500 wireless card

[Bob Proulx]

Chad Perrin wrote:
> Kevin Fenzi wrote:
> > That's different. Even in Debian on a kernel upgrade all the drivers
> > must be recompiled against the new kernel. This is why it's so nice to
> > have a driver thats in the mainstream kernel... it's automagically
> > updated when the kernel is and breakage is noticed right away. 

Yep.

> . . . unless your OS has a software management system that provides
> decent support for installation from source.  I'm pretty sure that
> Debian (via "apt-get source" et cetera), Gentoo, and FreeBSD will
> manage that sort of thing for you when installing from source, and
> upgrading kernels, via their default software management systems.

On Debian you still have to actually do it and so that is manual.
Having the ability to do it does not make it automatic.

On Debian I can 'apt-get install linux-image-X.Y.Z' or 'apt-get
dist-upgrade' and get kernel packages trivially.  But any custom
compiled modules I will need to recompile myself even if I have the
source to them.  The nvidia driver is a good example of this problem.
A lot of people like module-assistent for this (although I don't like
it personally) but that still means you need to do an external action
in addition to installing the new kernel.

On Ubuntu a set of drivers not otherwise included in the kernel such
as the nvidia driver is included in a version specific
linux-restricted-modules-X.Y.Z.  When new kernels are made available
matching versions of linux-restricted-modules are also made available.
So there at least a dist-upgrade will bring both kernel and restricted
modules in together and it appears trivial to the local administrator.
But if the module you want is not in that set then once again you are
left with needing to compile it manually for your specific kernel.

Bob