yum wants to remove my kernels, why?

[Timothy Murphy]

On Monday 16 January 2006 16:12, Jeff Spaleta wrote:

> > but in my view the default should be to keep the current, working kernel
> > as the default (as I believe it used to be).
>
> This makes for a very poor default for systems managed by novice fedora
> users. Novice users may not realize that they need to reconfigure their
> grub to take advantage of a security update kernel. Its very important that
> the default configuration is one that makes booting into security
> kernel updates as automatic as possible. For people with enough
> experience using Fedora to competently manage multiple remote systems,
> the configuration file /etc/sysconfig/kernel can be used to disable
> this default.

I still think it is a bad idea to install the new kernel automatically.
The worst thing that can happen for a newbie
is that he turns on his laptop and it doesn't work.

There have been several occasions where that has happened to me
with Fedora kernel updates - to mention three:
an xorg update which did not work on my Sony Picturebook,
a kernel update which did not work on an AMD-64 machine,
a SCSI update which did not work on a SCSI-only machine.

I regard kernel and distribution as orthogonal,
and would rather keep them separate.
I don't find it very onerous to go through the Grub menu,
and choose the kernel (or OS) I want.

The most important issue for a newbie (and for me)
is that whatever OS I am using
should work with the least possible trouble.
Everything else - including security - can come later.




-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland