slackware kernel update

[portia]

I'm running slackware64-current and installed slapt-get pointing to the official slackware64-current repositories. When I run slapt-get -upgrade, I get the following:

The following packages have been EXCLUDED:                        
  aaa_elflibs kernel-firmware kernel-generic kernel-headers kernel-huge 
  kernel-modules kernel-source                                          
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 7 not upgraded.

I know where it is in the slapt-getrc:

EXCLUDE=^aaa_elflibs,^devs,^glibc-.*,^kernel-.*,^udev,.*-[0-9]+dl$

Is it safe to remove it? Would updating this stuff break my system?

[Freston]

Well, you're running current aren't you?

You can remove it, but then, you may not be able to boot your machine. It's up to you. When you setup your system for easy recovery it wont be a problem. Just plan ahead. Make sure you have more than one way to boot your system and know how to solve things going wrong. It may not be this upgrade that breaks things, but it might be the next...

If you don't know how to do that, then leave things as they are. That's the beauty of Slack. It gives you choices, but it defaults to 'reliable'

[portia]

The reason I'm tempted to do it is that the ati proprietary drivers won't compile on it. I know there are a lot of issues with the current ati drivers. Slackware guys recently upgraded Xorg in the current, ati still doesn't work for me. I was thinking that with a new kernel I might be lucky.

[Freston]

With ATI drivers? I doubt, it might but I doubt.


Maybe you better look for help on the ATI drivers than on the Slackware kernel update. If you are thinking that another kernel can do better, it's not as hard as it sounds to compile a kernel

That's another reason btw that kernels don't get their automagic upgrade, people put time and effort in their kernels. It may be your solution. But then it might not. I don't know my ATI drivers.

[portia]

Thanks, I might actually have a go at recompiling a kernel. The problems with ati (I believe) are related to the kernel. I read somewhere that the latest ati driver doesn't work with certain kernels (but then I might be wrong)