Well, things didn’t go as well as I thought they did. I noticed that when I was loading the modules on my new kernel that the computer threw a number of FATAL errors, which I took to be a bad thing. More importantly, however, was that I could no longer mount my USB key – I got errors about /dev/sda not being a valid block device. Well that won’t do, so I compiled another kernel and booted into that. Then I had more problems – the USB key still didn’t work, sound software began whining about permissions-related issues and then, for no reason, my mouse stopped working. So I booted back into the previous kernel, and the mouse still didn’t work. I’ve had to go all the way back to my 2.4.18 kernel to get the mouse working again. Very annoying. I am not the only person around, I suspect, who thinks that you should be able to upgrade and have everything still work. Yes, the new kernel is very different, but you should not have to worry about the baby in the bathwater when you upgrade, you just shouldn’t.