Why is that? If new Kernels don't work with your old hardware, you should obviously use an older one. For old hardware in some cases you probably need to use an old Kernel and/or an old distro.

In the case of a graphics card and an old computer, I wouldn't bother. Why do you need that graphics card to work in the first place? I would think this graphic card should work with the open source nouveau driver and any Kernel it can work with. I'm not an expert on video cards, but I can't understand why that should not work. And the first question too, why does he want to install the driver for the GPU? Does it not have an inbuild video card? Can he not use VESA driver? Does it not give him a picture at all? What is the issue exactly?

But saying you need to have the newest Kernel in all cases as a general statement seems wrong. Yes, that is good advice to give in most cases, but it's not always so, and in some cases using older Kernels or distroes would be preferable for a variety of reasons.

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/
https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/
https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v5.x/

Why should I have to use the newest version of Firefox, why can't I use Firefox 28.1, it's just as good...

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/releases/
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/index.cgi

What good is a new version of Firefox if the computer is too slow to run it and it's unusable?

Besides, Kernel and Firefox is two entirely different things.

What good is an old firefox version if it cannot fully reproduce the WWW of 2020 and is much more prone to attacks than an up-to-date version?

That is true but the same principles apply. It's a valid comparison.

Not really. You only "really" need the Kernel that can run your hardware, preferably the newest one of those. The purpose of the Kernel is to start and run your hardware. If a new version no longer support legacy options that you need, you need to run an older Kernel that does.

So, your choice, you can throw away the hardware or run it with an older Kernel (and/or distro). What do you do?

Not saying it is optimal or will be easy.

1 members found this post helpful.

@ zeebra:-

I have to agree. But geeks the world over, irrespective of their platform of choice, have had it drummed into them for years - and thus fully 'believe' - that to be SAFE, you MUST run the very newest of everything, all the time, or else you'll get hacked. *Boo-hoo!*

I don't care what this lot believe. Since I run 'Puppy' full-time, and have for years, they all think I'm a prat anyway. "Oh, it's not a 'real' OS, it's just a toy." Utter crap. I can do things with Puppy that would make most Linux user's heads spin. So they use it for servers, and remote admin. Big deal. Why is that so special?

At the end of the day, I've been taking what many would consider to be major RISKS with Puppy for years.....and have never ONCE had any issues because of it. Pup's unique aufs layering file-system, read-only RAMdisk operation and extreme ease of backup take care of that. How many Linux OSs do you know of where you can back-up, FULLY, with a simple copy/paste operation.....literally in MINUTES?

(And with the way Pup runs fully in RAM for the session, if you think you've picked up summat 'nasty' you can simply choose NOT to 'save'.....and poof! it evaporates into cyberspace.)


Mike.

What about all of the security flaws that are found and fixed?

https://resources.whitesourcesoftwar...ulnerabilities

https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list.php

https://linux-audit.com/linux-vulner...-to-treatment/

Fixing security holes, and deploying that updated software is a good thing.

1 members found this post helpful.

It can be, but that is up to the user to accept the risk or not. Some uses may require older software and other uses may require the "latest & greatest". You decide which works for you.

Are you downloading a pre-built nVidia driver? Or compiling it?

Until my prehistoric G210-based nVidia card was no longer supported (by the 340.108 driver), I needed to recompile the driver when a new kernel was installed during an update process. Even when I wasn't paying close attention to an update and missed that a new kernel was being installed, I'd know that compiling the nVidia driver was necessary as Xorg would start, show a mouse pointer, and nothing else would happen. Switching to a console, re-compiling the driver, and rebooting always did the trick. So-o-o... if you can still obtain the nVidia source ".run" file for the latest driver version that supports your card, I'd give that a try. You'll might need to jump through a hoop or two to ensure that the nouveau driver get blacklisted and not loaded during the Linux bootstrap but part of the nVidia driver installation via the ".run" file should take care of that.

Oh... I almost forgot: You'll need the kernel source and header packages installed if you decide to recompile the nVidia driver.

HTH...