On Sun 15 Nov 2020 at 10:41:55 (+0200), Andrei POPESCU wrote: > On Sb, 14 nov 20, 16:36:03, Miroslav Skoric wrote: > > On 11/13/20 9:29 PM, David Wright wrote: > > > > > I would have thought that Debian has made kernel testing just about as > > > easy as they can since: > > > jessie installs with 3.16 but 4.9 is also available, > > > stretch installs with 4.9 but 4.19 is also available, > > > buster installs with 4.19 > > > so there's full overlap. (I've not looked at backports.) > > > > That's actually what I also thought about. > > > > Btw, when you say 'installs', do you mean a fresh installation only, or it > > includes a 'forced' kernel update during a distribution upgrade? My old box > > was installed for the first time in squeeze, then upgraded to wheezy, then > > to jessie.
By "installs with", I meant the former, ie the version supplied with the debian-installer. Once you're happy with that version, it's possible to install the newer version, leaving the old one as a fallback (assuming the usual things like enough room in /boot, etc). > It depends on whether you have the corresponding linux-image-<sub-arch> > package installed or not. I'm not sure what difference this would make. Looking at all the linux-image-X86* packages in stretch, they all depend on linux-image-4.9-* packages. One minor point: if linux-image-586/linux-image-3.16.0-10-586 is your current kernel version, linux-image-4.9-686 is the next kernel to try. (For some reason, there was never a non-PAE version of 3.16.0-*-686 packaged.) So AFAICT, to upgrade to my "also available" kernels above, you have to specifically install them. I hesitate to use the term "force" because that has different connotations for apt/dpkg. And I wouldn't combine it with a regular distribution upgrade. In fact, that's the whole point of my posting: to do each kernel change "long" after a distribution upgrade and "long" before the next one. ("Long" might be a single day of regression testing the system to make sure you're happy that everything still works after the change.) So the sequence would be: jessie with 3.16 running ok new kernel installation jessie with 4.9 running ok distribution upgrade stretch with 4.9 running ok new kernel installation stretch with 4.19 running ok distribution upgrade buster with 4.19 running ok Cheers, David.