Hello all,

well I have installed Mandrake 10, Slackware 9.1, Knoppix 3.3, SuSE 9.0, and Red Hat 9.0. I have now installed Debian using the beta 4 net installer CD. I have it all up and running just fine but for some reason it didn't install any sound drivers. I am using a audigy card and I know it shouldn't be any big deal to get drivers for it, but I was wondering if I could use apt get to update the kernel from 2.4.25 to the latest version ( I think it is 2.6.6? ). I am trying to avoid recompiling the kernel since I have only done it once and wasn't very successfull at it. I will try it again if I must but I thought I read somewhere that Debian could update the kernel with apt get. Please let me know.

Thanks

The easiest way is installing a kernel-image.deb package, once installed you just need to update your boot loader and reboot.

But sometimes the image package may not have everything you need installed, so that's why it may be best to configure from source instead.

This is the command to view which image file you may need.

I dont know how you did your kernel compile before but here's the debian way

http://www.desktop-linux.net/debkernel.htm

it's really easy... just remember to use xconfig to config (instead of menuconfig or whatever) and deselect things you dont need.

If you have Intel's PPro/Celeron/PII/PIII/PIV cpu, you can install kernel-image-2.6-686, which gives you the latest i686-optimized 2.6.x kernel that is available in Debian. After this you can keep your kernel up-to-date simply by using apt-get (or Aptitude or Synaptic, which are GUI frontends to apt-get).

I have also used the Sarge beta installer. The default kernel supports all my hardware and I didn't even need to update boot loader or anything when I apt-get'ed the kernel-image-2.6-686. I thought this was pretty impressive (and I still think it is).

There's a kernel-image for Athlon also, that's why I gave the apt-cache search command to display all available kernel images.

The newer installer-4 now let you install using a 2.6 kernel but it's using 2.6.3-1-386. At least it get you started using the 2.6 one.

In order to get the 2.6.3-1-386 kernel when you use the Sarge beta installer, you need to boot it with "linux26". That is, at the very first prompt where the installer stops, type "linux26" and press enter to launch the installer.

ok all I will probably just redo my machine and try doing the linux26 at the prompt. Thanks. Them can I just use aptget to update the kernel from there?

Sounds like a good plan. Once the installation is finished and your sources.list is OK, do "apt-get update" and "apt-get upgrade" (or "apt-get dist-upgrade" if you point your sources.list to Unstable). After that you're ready to do the kernel upgrade.

ok well I finally got kernel 2.6.3-1-386 from the net installer sarge and was wondering how I would go about updating to 2.6.6 and also getting the latest nvidia drivers installed. Do I have to recompile the kernel and if so how? I have read a few guides but never really understood exactly what to do to get it installed correctly.

Thanks for the help

You might want to make a quick search using the search button at the top of this page to find other threads that discuss installing nvidia drivers. Use "nvidia" as a search word, select "Debian" as a search forum and hit Enter...

I suppose even 2.4.25 kernel image should have your sound card's driver. It might be that the driver was not loaded. Use modconf to install the module, reboot and make sure you are in group audio.

I just updated my kernel via apt and the kernel images (kernel-image-2.6.6-1-k7-smp). I manually tweaked my lilo.conf and reboot. When my system came back up I didn't have any internet connection. 'apt-get update' returned failed connection attempts, etc. How do I reconfigure my network/ethernet setting via DHCP again, as that's what I did when I first installed? (This is from/continuing this thread btw).