On Wednesday 31 March 2004 13.00, SpamHog wrote: > So I still wonder if ALL i386 kernels contain such vendor-provided > modules. No, not at all. But if Debian would change the binary API of the kernel, vendor-provided modules would stop working for the people who use them. This is not supposed to happen in Debian stable. Vendor-provided modules are those which are provided by 3rd party vendors, and not by Debian. Vendor-provided to the user, not provided to Debian. These modules include things like nvidia drivers, promise drivers, ... (All these companies who have not seen the light yet and think that providing some random blob of non-opensource code is called Linux support). > You say compliling everything from source will take care of the binary > API mismatch - did I get it right? Well, it would probably change your kernel modules API/ABI, but since you're compiling your own kernel, you *know* that self-compiled kernel add-on modules might stop working, and so you're prepared for it. Probability is that you have no such modules anyway (you'd know it if you have), so you should be fine. Just be sure to keep the old kernel in your lilo/grub configuration in case the new kernel doesn't work. I hope everything is clear now. cheers -- vbi -- Never say "OOPS!" always say "Ah, Interesting!"
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