Can I update kernel only?

On Tuesday 25 October 2011 22:18, NoHtmlMailsPlease conveyed the
following to alt.os.linux.mandrake...

I was very happy using Mandrake9 for years.
Then when I was given the CD for FC1 I installed that and found that
it was noticeably slower, but could do USBstik.

Later I needed to connect to a problematic fixed-wireless-modem, so
I got Slak13 for the 1.6* kernel.

1.6? That's old. :o

Now Slak13 has lost its root password [...

Boot up in single-user mode or rescue mode, and set a new root password.

...] and I read some crap about <password expiry>;

Set expiry to "0" to not have the password expire.

and when I DOWNgraded to FC1 and especially Mandrake, I found the user
experience to be MUCH faster and better.

Mandrake was cool. I don't like Fedora.

So can I keep my good old Mandrake and just upgrade the kernel
and possibly modules to handle USB ...etc. ?

Hmm... No. You'll need more than just an up-to-date kernel to keep the
thing going with the requirements of today. You'll have to upgrade
glibc as well, and once you go there, there's lots of stuff that's going
to break, not to mention that the browsers which came with Mandrake 9
won't even work properly anymore on 90% of the websites due to the
transition to Ajax and the new HTML standards.

Sorry dude. I have the same issue here with a laptop that still has
Mandrake 8.2 on it. I'm using it simply for remote logins and/or
network debugging on my local LAN. It's too old for anything else, and
the limited specs of the machine won't even allow me to put anything
more recent on it.

As an aside, please bear in mind that this group is now defunct. I'm
still monitoring it and there may be a few other people still who do as
well, but most of the other regulars who have chosen to stick to a
Mandrake-like distribution have moved on to alt.os.linux.mandriva,
alt.os.linux.pclinuxos, alt.os.linux.mageia.

Mandriva is the new name of what used to be Mandrake, after MandrakeSoft
merged with Conectiva. PCLinuxOS is a Mandriva spin-off started by Bill
Reynolds (also known as TexStar) after the Mandriva corporate
(mis)management laid off some of their primary developers. And after
they pulled the same kind of stunt about two years ago, a large part of
the Mandriva developers - and actually, their best - have gone on to
fork the distribution and have created Mageia, a not-for-profit
community clone of Mandriva.

Mageia is currently at release 1 and still has some niggles, but it is
also now still virtually the same as Mandriva 2010.x. Mageia 2 will be
released on May 15th of 2012. Chances are however that, as time
progresses, Mageia will drift farther off from Mandriva as a
distribution and may find its own place "in the market", so to speak.
PCLinuxOS has certainly already done that. It still uses the Mandriva
tools like DiskDrake, msec and the Mandriva Control Center, but it's
quite a different distribution already now, which comes as installable
live CDs only and, just like with Ubuntu, Sabayon and so many others,
specific CD images per desktop environment. In addition to that,
PCLinuxOS does use .rpm packages, but they are installed via apt-get and
the Synaptic Package Manager from Debian and derivatives.

If you really like the old Mandrake feel, then I think the closest thing
you can find to it these days would be either Mandriva 2011.0 - which
hasn't been out all that long yet and clearly suffers from the departure
of Mandriva's best developers onto Mageia - or Mageia 1. But either
way, if you're a KDE user, then you're going to have to do with KDE 4.
KDE 3.5.10 was the last one supported by the KDE developers themselves,
and although it is still being maintained by a third party initiative,
no distribution still includes KDE 3.5.10 or earlier anymore.

If you're a Gnome fan, then Mandriva 2011.0 may no longer apply as a
candidate for you either, because Mandriva has announced that they will
be dropping support for Gnome, and this may now already have happened in
the new release - I don't know, I'm using Mageia right now. Mageia 1
has KDE 4.6.5 and Gnome 2.3 (with either Compiz Fusion or Metacity), as
well as all the other usual suspects, i.e. FluxBox, OpenBox,
WindowMaker, XFCE, LXDE, awesome, twm et al.

= Aragorn (registered GNU/Linux user #223157)