Newer kernel backports for 10.04

[Liam Proven]

If you're still running "Lucid", 10.04, and are having driver problems
or something, there are now 3 different newer kernels available.

The kernel contains wifi drivers and so on. The only main class of
driver it doesn't contain are graphics drivers for X.org - X contains
its own. However, some newer proprietary graphics drivers, e.g. from
nVidia, may require a newer kernel than Lucid's 2.6.32 to install and
work correctly. These kernels are thus a considerable boon for quite a
lot of reasons and may help 10.04 to remain useful for some time to
come yet. For instance, they are great if you don't like Unity and are
waiting for GNOME Shell to become a bit more mature, say. They aren't
just for servers.

They newer kernels are backported from 10.10 ("Maverick"), 11.04
("Natty") and 11.10 ("Oneiric").

There are 3 different kernels in each family: one generic, one generic
with PAE support for 32-bit machines with 4GB or more of RAM, and one
for servers.

If you look in Synaptic (or the package manager of your choice), you
should see (for example):

linux-image-generic-lts-backport-natty

and the matching linux-image-generic-pae-backport-natty and
linux-image-server-backport-natty.

There are also families ending -oneiric and -maverick.

>From memory, the standard 10.04 kernel is version 2.6.32-xx where -xx
is the current build.

The Maverick series are 2.6.35-xx, Natty ones are 2.6.38-xx and the
Oneiric series are 3.0.0-xx.

If you install (say) linux-image-generic-lts-backport-natty, you will
get the current build of 2.6.38-xx and it will be updated as newer
builds are sent out. You don't need to install a specific version - if
you do so, it will *not* be updated.

I have found that the PAE kernel will not boot on some Celeron
machines which have the PAE functionality disabled, so I recommend
against using it unless you know you will need support for >= 4GB RAM.

I have resolved quite a few problems with these, including machines
that hang on shutdown rather than switch off, getting newer WLAN
chipsets going that did not work with the standard 10.04 kernel, and
supporting some Sony Vaio machines that will not boot older kernels
successfully.

The same kernels are also available in Mint 9, as it is based on Ubuntu 10.04.

-- 
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