On 11/6/05, Edgar Hucek <hostmaster@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:jerome lacoste wrote:[...]I will ask you just one question: as a user, why did you want toDepends on the user and what he wants to do. There are several
upgrade your kernel?
reasons why a user wanna upgrade to new kernel. Maybe new supported
hardware and so on. It's frustrating for the user, have on the one side the
new hardware supported but on the other side, mybe broken support for
the existing hardware.
New kernel feature and new supported hardware would be the only reason
for me to upgrade. Personally that doesn't come that often. My
hardware configurations don't change that much. I make sure it's well
supported, not just recently. When one buys a non supported hardware,
one should know the path chosen won't be the easiest.
And why should dirstribution makers always backport new security fixes ?
Because they want to ensure maximum stability. That's what users are
(sometimes) paying for.
And second 90% of the security issues will not affect the majority of
the home users (because they are restricted to a particular area of
the kernel not affecting the user, or because they already require
access on the machine to be exploitable). You will have much more
risks using a box with an unpatched php or apache than with an
unpached kernel, or without a proper firewall configuration.
On a desktop, there are probably a bunch of out of kernel modules that will needFrom my point of view, it makes a difference if i have to recompile
upgrading with each new kernel modules. Just on the laptop I am using
right now, I will have to upgrade the vmware bridge, nvidia driver,
madwifi wireless driver, etc. And that's normal. The new development
model didn't change that.
a module or realy upgrade it.
That only happens for out ot tree modules, which shouldn't be really
out of tree in the first place. That's the issue. If they are out of
tree, it's for a reason. Either they cannot be in tree, or they are
not stable enough.
There you see the issue.
[...]
cu
ED.
Jerome