Installing Linux


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I had completely given up on linux because it just doesn't work with my computer so my uncle sent me 2 500 Mhz PC's which he said work fine with linux. My question is, is there any linux distro where you can tell it to use a kernel that you have downloaded (i.e. 2.6.1) so I don't have to faff about compiling a new one (last time I did that my startup went completely wacko). I've got Slackware 9.1 can I tell that to use a kernel I download? If so is there any extention I should specifically download? (tar.gz rather than tar.bz2 etc?) Hope it made sense I'm typing fast in a college lesson while we're waiting for students to turn up.. Thanks

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Are you talking about telling it to use a pre-compiled kernel? Or just to use different sources to compile a new kernel?

If it's the latter, just uncompress the tarball into /usr/src and make a symlink from the uncompressed source tree to /usr/src/linux and compile your new kernel and move it to /boot, modify your bootloader and you're all set.

If it's the former, I don't think that would be a good idea. If you try to use a pre-compiled kernel from another install, there's no guarantee that all of the modules and options you need for your hardware are going to be compiled and available. Not to mention the fact that there are probably going to be other modules and options compiled that you won't need and are just going to bloat the kernel and make your system boot slower.

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well, you can always try gentoo since you have an spare computer to play whit, there you just download an configure your kernel but you are going to have to compile the hole system, but that gives you total control over it :)

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no.? gotta complie:))

Not exactly - Redhat and Fedora both have 2.6.1 rpms out.

Now you might run into a few dependancy issues - but you don't have to compile the kernel;))

Here is link to the RH 9 2.6.1 rpms http://people.redhat.com/arjanv/2.6/RPMS.kernel/

Here is link to Fedora Dev rpms ftp://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedo...ent/i386/Fedora

So if you downloaded and installed the Fedora Dev - you would be running the 2.6.1. kern, and you would not have to compile a thing;))

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So if I installed a rpm it would update the kernel ok?

Yes - if you installed the RPM it would have a new kernel you could boot. I would NOT suggest you do an upgrade, since something might go wrong, etc.. Always leave your working kern as an option until your sure the NEW kernel works.

rpm -ihv kernel-2.6.x.etc....rpm would install the new kernel for you, but leave your old one as an option

But I am quite sure there are going to be other packages as well, that need to be updated for you to be able to install the new kern from rpm. RPM will give you a listing of what packages are not up to the required levels, etc..

The RH link I gave includes all of the packages you should need to be able to install the 2.6.1 rpm on a RH9 system - I have not played with the Fedora development release yet - but I would guess that everything you would need is there for download as well.

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