Karmic i386 flavour changes

[Andy Whitcroft]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 11:30:11AM +0100, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 08:56:33PM -0700, Geza Kovacs wrote:
> > Rather than shipping both kernels on the Live CD, wouldn't it be more
> > space-efficient to ship just the baseline legacy kernel on the CD, then
> > have an empty linux-generic dummy package with a low version number (not
> > the actual kernel) be installed if PAE is supported and there is > 4 GB
> > RAM; that way the PAE kernel will be automatically downloaded and made
> > default upon the next system update (or if internet access is available,
> > as part of d-i's post-install stage)?
> 
> Firstly, that's pretty weird. :-) Secondly, it has the problem that you
> get automatically switched to an entirely different kernel flavour on
> your first update after reboot, which means that you could install,
> think "aha, excellent, it supports all my hardware", and then discover
> that the first update toasts your system. While obviously any situation
> where a kernel fails to work is bad, in many ways it's much worse when
> it happens on upgrade after you've done lots of work on a computer than
> when it happens on a fresh install.
> 
> It's much better to install actual real packages, one way or another.

There is always the risk we will break their system on installation of a
new kernel.  The updated kernel would install in parallel with the
non-pae kernel from the CD, so they should just find they can boot the
previous kernel as normal and whine a lot about it.  ie. it is as
recoverable as any kernel update.

Obviously not ideal.

-apw