cups vuole cancellare il kernel?

[Giovanni Gigante <giov@cidoc.iuav.it>]

Ho una macchina con sarge, installato senza fronzoli e con il kernel
standard. Ora volevo installare CUPS per usare la macchina come server
di stampa.
Seguendo le istruzioni della "Debian and Windows Shared Printing
mini-HOWTO", installo cups (apt-get install cupsys).
Lui inizia e poi dice, tra le varie cose che intende fare:
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  initrd-tools kernel-image-2.4.27-1-386
e poi:

You are running a kernel (version 2.4.27-1-386) and attempting to
remove
the same version. This is a potentially disastrous action. Not only
will /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.27-1-386 be removed, making it impossible to
boot
it, (you will have to take action to change your boot loader to boot
a new kernel), it will also remove all modules under the directory
/lib/modules/2.4.27-1-386. Just having a copy of the kernel image is
not
enough, you will have to replace the modules too.

  I repeat, this is very dangerous. If at all in doubt, answer
  no. If you know exactly what you are doing, and are prepared to
  hose your system, then answer Yes.
Remove the running kernel image (not recommended) [No]?

a questo punto io chiaramente mi terrorizzo e rispondo no, e allora:

dpkg: error processing kernel-image-2.4.27-1-386 (--remove):
subprocess pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: initrd-tools: dependency problems, but removing anyway as you request:
kernel-image-2.4.27-1-386 depends on initrd-tools (>= 0.1.48).
Removing initrd-tools ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
kernel-image-2.4.27-1-386
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

E in conclusione cups non viene installato.
Qualcuno può spiegarmi il senso di tutto questo, e cosa devo fare per
installare cups senza devastarmi la macchina?

grazie
giovanni