On upgrading to Edgy from Dapper, confusing kernel selection

[ben hall]

Binary package hint: update-manager

I followed the standard procedure to upgrade (gksudo "update-manager -c -d") from dapper to edgy. In dapper the 686 kernel was used. In edgy, by default a kernel was selected (i386) which didn't support all of the features of my processor, most importantly smp & scaling. This was confusing in the upgrade for several reasons
* I was under the impression that there was only a single x86 kernel in edgy, so I didn't think I needed to seperately select a kernel
* Afterwards, I installed a generic kernel, but the i386 was booted in preference, again causing some confusion as previously the boot order had used any newly installed kernel in preference. This also gave the impression (when not paying attention to the boot) that there was an intermittant problem with the kernel
The following suggestions might solve this:
*If a second, very simple i386 kernel is to be included in the disto, a selection dialog (say asking the user if they want a failsafe or normal kernel) would prevent this kind of confusion from arising.
*If more recently installed kernels were given preference in the boot order this might help.
 *Renaming the i386 kernel to something more distinctive would also be of benefit
*Switching to using only a single x86 kernel
Many thanks

[Andrew Ash (ash211)]

I think this is more a bug of update-manager than the kernel itself, so I'm closing the kernel task.

[to be removed (liw)]

I believe we now have reduced the number of kernel flavors so that this bug doesn't occur anymore. intrepid has -generic, -server, and -virtual kernel flavors, jaunty seems to add -rt. Upgrades from release to release would seem to me to retain the user's preferred flavor. Thus, I'll close this bug report.

ben hall, if you disagree, please re-open, or tell me, and I'll reopen. I apologize if I have misunderstood either the report or the current situation and am over-eager in closing the bug.