Should I upgrade my kernel?

[it30rivers]

i'm not a total linux n00b and i'm confident I could upgrade without buggering something up and trashing my system.

so the question is whether or not it's a good idea to or not. I'm asking mainly cause i dont want it to effect any of the backtrack tools.

also I'm running an acer aspire one AOA150 if i was to upgrade would I need a specific install?


thanks in advance.

[Archangel-Amael]

You can but we won't be helping you with it.
I would however strongly suggest that you don't since any number of things can go wrong.

[it30rivers]

Thanks for the tip.

[purehate]

Just check out our R1 release, it has a upgraded kernel.

[upc0d3]

Just for consideration, you need to think a little in why should you do that. For example, are you having any kind of problem with the current kernel ? The new kernel released have some feature that you need ?

Think about this questions man.

And one more think, the kernel of backtrack is a customized kernel, that's why it runs in a lot of hardware fine. So I suggest that you compile the kernel, to learn how it works, but does this in a VM.

Bye.

[lupin]

Compiling your own kernel can be an excellent learning experience, so Id recommend it IF you are willing to troubleshoot any issues yourself AND if you know how to recover from problems (or are willing to bork your BackTrack install). As Archangel-Amael mentioned, you are unlikely to get support here if you stuff things up.

[Encrypted_Soldier]

Compiling the kernel in a VM sound like a good idea. Especially if the system running BT is one that you need for something important, you run the risk of really messing stuff up. Just remember "If it ain't broken, don't fix it"

P.S. Is there any reason behind upgrading that you would like to share?

[it30rivers]

thanks for all the recommendations guys. I think i'll test it out on a VM on my main desktop first

the reason i wanted to update it was mainly to see if it could be done but also because from what i understand backtrack 4 is based on the ubuntu kernal so i was sort of wondering if there is an ubuntu update then there should be a backtrack update. please correct me if i'm wrong, i'm still learning.

also on a sort of off topic, what sort of security updates does linux/ubuntu/bracktrack provide?

[lupin]

the reason i wanted to update it was mainly to see if it could be done but also because from what i understand backtrack 4 is based on the ubuntu kernal so i was sort of wondering if there is an ubuntu update then there should be a backtrack update. please correct me if i'm wrong, i'm still learning.

The kernel is actually based on the Debian kernel source. The packages are Ubuntu based (the core packages at least, some of the BackTrack specific packages are, well BackTrack specific), but there won't necessarily be a BackTrack update whenever there is an Ubuntu update, because they use different package repositories.

I'll let one of the Devs comment on the security updates question.

[purehate]

Whenever a security update is introduced into the main Ubuntu repositories, we "grab" it and review it for one week in our testing repo as we do with any package which ubutnu devs maintain to make sure that it will not break any aspect of backtrack.