[Beowulf] Repenting for sins against Dell (on good Friday, no less)

[Mark Hahn]

> It's useful because it will automatically build and install existing
> kernel modules for newly-installed kernels. Many vendors ship drivers as
> RPMs separate from the kernel, so they won't get updated when the kernel
> is updated unless you use something like dkms.

interesting.  the distro-based approach is that when you update your 
kernel, the package manager will naturally also update any packages 
which are dependent on the kernel version.  that certainly works fine
if you're using normal (binary, precompiled) packages.  I guess the 
issue with rebuilding packages is that they are, in some sense, 
version-flexible (can be rebuilt for new kernels).  the issue, though
is that you don't know whether the package will still build for the 
new kernel until you try - it might have dependencies on a symbol that
gets removed from the kernel update, for instance.

in other words, with a normal all-precompiled distro, dkms still seems 
redundant.