Kernel updates and my X-Fi sound card

[David Fletcher]

I have a Creative X-Fi chip on a PCI-E board that of course does not work 
because so far there is no driver for it.

I'm running a fresh install of Hardy that I did 2 or 3 weeks ago, with the 
sound card installed and the mainboard sound function switched off in the 
BIOS, so now I have a silent PC :-(

The situation is, that Takashi Iwai has been working on an open source driver 
for these chips that he says he will put into kernel 2.6.31. So, when this 
kernel is issued, is it likely to get installed as a normal upgrade to Hardy, 
or will I have to go to

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/

and grab it for myself? At present I have kernel 2.6.24 on an up to date 
system.

If I do grab it for myself, is there any danger of screwing up my system? In 
theory if it doesn't work I should be able to boot into the previous kernel 
and remove it again.

Dave