Jenny Hopkins wrote:

I've managed to avoid upgrading a kernel up till now. How tricky is it on a scale of 1 - 10 for someone slightly above the level of complete incompetence?

Well - I managed it and my Linux knowledge on a scale of 1 to 10 is probably just below 1 at the moment. I had a slight false start, owing to some missing symlinks, but I soon fixed those, thanks to this list, and then it was ALMOST trivial - just type in the right commands in the right order and make plenty of tea between each command. Also, I discovered a mag called Linux Format (thanks to John Seago) and that has a cover CD bearing the source code for kernel 2.4.9, which is what I used for my new kernel last week. So I didn't even have to download 28Mb of source code before I started! I'd read somewhere that I should expect the compilation to take hours or days on an old PC (my P166 is ex-skip) but I was done in less than an hour, once I'd sorted my way through the 'make menuconfig' stage.

So if I can, I'd say anyone can. If you want me to share my lack of knowledge any further, feel free to ask! I found the Kernel HOW-TO quite helpful and there's a README in with the source (which, had I read it more diligently, would have probably saved me falling into the lack-of-symlinks hole...). Hope this encourages you?

Gerald.