On 03/24/2016 06:48 AM, Daniel Bauer wrote:
Hi,
for another thread I am tempted to give kernel 4.5 a try on my asus laptop (with leap), but I am not sure if this is intelligent...
In fact, the only reason for a newer kernel (for me) would be that the touchpad is not recognized by the current kernel.
Most of the advances of the 4.x series are not to the UI, which is more to do with application, and are to do with internals, such as spin loops, low level device handling. Your handling of the touchpad is, i presume, only relevant in the GUI. X11. Thus it might be a udev issue, a X11 config issue or even a KDE issue (there is a touchpad config in KDE's "systemsettings"). If you think the touchpad is not recognized by the kernel, you'll see a problem in 'dmesg'. It is more likely to be in the X11 For example, I get $ grep pad ${HOME}/.xsession-errors-\:0 kded(17751) Kded::loadModule: Could not load library "kded_touchpad" . [ "Cannot load library /usr/lib64/kde4/kded_touchpad.so: (libxcb-record.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)" ] Also check /var/log/Xorg.0.log
Lots of questions...:
- if I install a newer kernel, do the updates (zypper up and/or those update-messages that appear in the controlbar...) still work normal? Will I get the correct updates for leap, matching to the changed kernel?
Again this is a UI level issue and not a kernel issue. Zypper and the widgets in the control bar as applications.
- do I run special risks?
I tried up to kernel 4.4, but had to pass the parameter "idle=nomwait" (otherwise only a black screen would appear). It booted only to console modus, probably because I have installed suse-prime/nvidia drivers. I was not able to uninstall the nvidia-drivers without completely ruining my system (had to do a complete new system install).
There's a lot of if-but-maybe around issues like this, depending on what else you were doing. Booting involves not just the kernel but grub or grub2, whatever you are using for you 'flash' screen out of grub, the graphical boot options (which I've long since disabled), how you did the mkinitrd and stuff like that. oh, and various daemons along the way. You might even have some old sysvinit scripts interfering. I can't peer over your shoulder and poke around on your machine to get to the "Ahh!" point, only ask questions. Like "how did you install and build your 4.4 ... in more detail", what's you baseline system? Is it 13.1 or 13.2?". Its a bit hard for me to comment; on the one had I've been doing this for so long and in such as conservative manner that i avoid many pitfalls by reflex.
- does it make sense to install a newer kernel for a common user on a productive machine, the only one that I will have with me when travelling? Or do I better live without touchpad and have the standard system?
1. Your touchpad problems are not kernel problems. They may be udev rule problems but are more likely to be X11 problems 2. Some of the benefit of later kernels have to do with speed and reliability of networking, internal locks and spin-loops that result in a smoother operation of the kernel, but are not immediately obvious at the user level. -- A: Yes. > Q: Are you sure? >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. >>> Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org