Upgrading the woody kernel

[Felixk Karpfen <felixk@webone.com.au>]

I am aware that this question has been asked and answered umpteen
times on this newsgroup and I know that the available options include:

- roll your own; and
- use the Debian way.

However I believe that my situation is sufficiently different that it is
worth asking:

- which option?; and  
- please point to documentation, full and sufficiently simple to be
  understood by amateurs.

The special features on my box are as follows:

I have successfully installed both "woody" and (very recently) "sarge"
on separate partitions.

Woody's 2.4 kernel fails to correctly identify any of the hardware
on my ew computer (the drivers <do not exist|are not readily
available>). Nevertheless, it has been tweaked and does almost
everything that I want (sound and cdrecord do not work). The sarge
kernel (2.4.27) recognises my hardware.  But sarge comes with lots of
bells and whistles that I do not use and will need a lot of massaging
before it delivers what I use every day.

So if I could _safely_ update the kernel on my "woody" partition, the
chore would be much smaller than tweaking "sarge".

The outcome that I wish to avoid is that I destroy "woody" with a
botched kernel update and am forced to tweak "sarge".

All advice will be gratefully received.

Felix Karpfen 

-- 
Felix Karpfen
Public Key 72FDF9DF (DH/DSA)