I just had to fix my Ubuntu install - thought I'd try and warn others. I just installed Ubuntu on my Armada M700 laptop - I followed the improvements on ubuntuguide.org and got it all going swimmingly. Then I got cocky and installed a 686 kernel. Even that went okay, but not when I put the "linux-restricted-modules-686" and "linux-restricted-modules-2.6.10-5-686". Suddenly, on next boot, Gnome wouldn't start - some sort of problem with the elf headers in libgcrypt.so.11.

I just went to the failsafe terminal and "sudo apt-get remove linux-restricted-modules-686" and "sudo apt-get remove linux-restricted-modules-2.6.10-5-686" and all seems well... so far.

This is one reason I went mainly to Slackware - when something like this happens, you know that it was something that you did by hand, there isn't any behind-the-scenes f**kery going on as there seems to be with these package managers.

Nah, I don't think it's a problem with the package managers, it's simply a problem that the disto is not as stable as some might want you to believe. If it was an inherent problem with the package management Debian wouldn't be the rock upon which so many others have built.