Linux Kernel

[Dav0s]

Excuse my noobism, im trying to get into linux and this is one of my first questions.

Ive looked over the internet at different distros, but nowhere does it say which linux kernel is used in which distro.

i was expecting it to say "fedora core 3, current edition uses 2.6.1 kernel" etc.

but it doesnt say anywhere.

so...am i to assume that the linux kernel is easily upgrdable from within linux? just a simple command to update?

or am i missing something somewhere with this kernel nonsense.

 

[Eguy]

I believe you have to download the whole new distro for upgrades

 

[JN]

Excuse my noobism, im trying to get into linux and this is one of my first questions.

Ive looked over the internet at different distros, but nowhere does it say which linux kernel is used in which distro.

i was expecting it to say "fedora core 3, current edition uses 2.6.1 kernel" etc.

but it doesnt say anywhere.

so...am i to assume that the linux kernel is easily upgrdable from within linux? just a simple command to update?

or am i missing something somewhere with this kernel nonsense.

As a general rule, the most commercial distros (fedora, mandrake, suse) contain the latest kernel for the best hardware support.

It tends to be security based distro's that run on older kernels (purely for the fact that the latest ones havn't been tested for long enough).

Upgrading the kernel can be anything from moderatly hard to extremely hard for the linux newbie - it all depends on what distro you choose, how good you are at following instructions, and if you want to compile a kernel specifically for your hardware (or just got for a generic one)

 

[PV5150]

Ah you beat me to it XMS

 

[anonymous_c]

With most distro's, it's probably easier to upgrade to the next version of it. However, you can usually get kernel patches to upgrade the kernel.

I use Gentoo, and it's great. You install it once, and you never have to download any more installation CD's. It's update system, portage, keeps everything up to date. All I need to do is type "emerge sync;emerge -uD world" and it updates any outdated applications, etc. It's very easy to upgrade the kernel, I simply download it from portage ("emerge ck-sources") (I use the CK-Patchset), import my old kernel configuration settings, type "make && make modules_install", it compiles it, then I put the kernel in the boot partition, and there you go, all done, I reboot and I'm in my new kernel.

I wouldn't try doing this with Fedora or another "easy" distro, however, as they most likely have different ways of doing it, I haven't explored it enough on other distros. If you're using Fedora, which uses yum as the update system, I believe it download's kernel patches and patches it, but I'm not sure.

Let me highly recommend Gentoo to you, though. It's my only "OS" and it's excellent. Good luck with Linux!