Re: [tlug] Just curious... how much impact does a kernel update make?

[Mattia Dongili <malattia@example.com>]

On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 11:51:09AM +0900, Dave M G wrote:
> Edward,
>
> Thanks for responding.
>
>> Read a changelog, or follow LKML, though I suspect a lot of it isn't
>> going to be of interest to you.  The development goes on in the open so
>> it is just a matter of looking.
>
> I know I can see what changes are made. A list is available in the  
> Upgrade Manager interface.
>
> It's just that I really have no idea of the scale of the impact.
>
> For example, I just upgraded yesterday to 2.6.27-8.17.
...
> My curiosity is not about the specifics of what changes are made, but  
> the overall impact to stability or performance to the average user. With  
> each kernel update, is it fair to say the system is significantly  
> improved, or merely that minor bugs and problems are resolved?

as long as the first 3 numbers remain the same (2.6.27 in your case, the
rest is the distribution packaging revision) it should be mostly a
matter of bugfixing and eventually supporting more hardware when that is
trivial (like adding a new ID for a specific device). But it really
depends on the distribution.
And it's not just *minor* bugs that get fixed, there could be pretty big
ones.

In general upgrading the kernel to one of the same version is supposed
to improve stability, upgrading to a more recent version (say 2.6.28
when available) will introduce new functionalities and possibly remove
some old cruft.

cheers
-- 
mattia
:wq!