should "apt-get dist-upgrade" include kernel updates???

[Derek Broughton]

Joe(theWordy)Philbrook wrote:
>> 
>> As someone else pointed out, Breezy shouldn't generally
>> have kernel updates.
> 
> Thank you Derek. Can I presume that this is "because" it's been released
> as a stable ubuntu version, and that once released as stable (June 1st?),
> Dapper will also only occasionally get kernel updates?

Yes.
> 
>> However, there's also the fact that the actual kernel
>> packages do not conflict with each other.  You need to
>> have one of the meta-packages, like linux-image-686,
>> installed to get the latest kernel with a dist-upgrade,
> 
> I'm glad to hear that kernel packages don't conflict, as this makes me
> think I can safely "apt-get install linux-686" on my p3 without
> needing to "apt-get remove linux-386" first. If so, then _my_ grub menu
> will have the ability to boot the 386 kernel if something reacts badly
> to the 686 one, and vs/vsr. AND be able to be sure I've got the latest
> version of both to work with. WOW!

That's definitely the way it's always worked, ime.  There's one final
caveat.  This is apt-get's normal behaviour - since the old kernel isn't in
conflict with the new kernel, nothing gets removed.  _Normally_, aptitude
would actually remove the old kernel since it was automatically installed
by another virtual package and that package no longer depends on it. 
There's a special config file in /etc/apt/conf.d/05aptitude that prevents
that:
 aptitude::Keep-Unused-Pattern "^linux-image.*$ | \ 
   ^linux-restricted-modules.*$";

-- 
derek