getting a more up to date kernel for debian

[Jude DaShiell]

The latest speakup kernel available is at 2.6.12-1. To get it edit your 
/etc/sources.list and add a line that reads: deb 
http://people.debian.org/~shane/speakup/kernel/ ./ then save the 
/etc/sources.list file. Then aptitude update or apt-get update whichever 
you use. Then do aptitude upgrade or apt-get upgrade. Once that's done 
you're ready to go for the kernel. It's going to be either aptitude 
install or apt-get install and the name of the package you want.  If you 
have a pentium 3 like I do, you want to use -686 for the architecture part 
of this.  What I got was linux-image-2.6.12-1-speakup-686 and after that 
installed I did a reboot since we're still using the old kernel we want to 
see if the new one works before wiping the old one out.  I rebooted and 
all came up talking with the new 2.6.12 kernel identification.  So I did 
apt-get remove --purge kernel-2.6.8-2 and that wiped out the kernel but 
left the modules in place.  There might have been a way to clear the old 
modules off the disk with the same apt-get command but I didn't know what 
the modules package name was at the time so didn't do that.  The 
2.6.12-speakup series is obsolete now so far as the debian security team 
is concerned but for now it's the most up-to-date available for download. 
With kernels I've been told "there is no such thing as a shortcut". 
Those can most easily be built using succeeding versions and not skipping 
versions since that'show sighted kernel builders usually do it; that way 
they have the version just behind this one to compare against when bugs 
crop up.