Fedora – Is it normal that Fedora’s yum list kernel-* shows two versions of kernel being used

fedorakernelpackage-managementyum

Is it true that the following shows that two versions of the kernel are being used? (Is the bold face — the one enclosed in ** showing what is currently loaded / used). Basically, I just created a VM using VMWare Fusion on a Macbook Pro, downloaded Fedora (the current one, which is 17), installed it and did the upgrade it prompted me to do in a window.

(The ones I see are kernel.x86_64 3.3.4-5.fc17 and
kernel.x86_64 3.6.10-2.fc17, so 3.3.4 and 3.6.10 are both running? How come the other kernel parts like headers, modules, or tools don't need to be running?)

$ yum list kernel-*
Loaded plugins: langpacks, presto, refresh-packagekit
(1/2): fedora/primary_db                                 |  14 MB     00:13     
(2/2): updates/primary_db                                | 7.3 MB     00:06     
Installed Packages
**kernel.x86_64**                       3.3.4-5.fc17    @koji-override-0/$releasever
**kernel.x86_64**                       3.6.10-2.fc17   @updates                    
Available Packages
kernel-debug.x86_64                 3.6.10-2.fc17   updates                     
kernel-debug-devel.x86_64           3.6.10-2.fc17   updates                     
kernel-debug-modules-extra.x86_64   3.6.10-2.fc17   updates                     
kernel-devel.x86_64                 3.6.10-2.fc17   updates                     
kernel-doc.noarch                   3.6.10-2.fc17   updates                     
kernel-headers.x86_64               3.6.10-2.fc17   updates   
kernel-modules-extra.x86_64         3.6.10-2.fc17   updates                     
kernel-tools.i686                   3.3.4-5.fc17    fedora                      
kernel-tools.x86_64                 3.6.10-2.fc17   updates 

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Best Answer

Yum is not showing the running kernel(s)... You cannot have multiple kernels running simultaneously in a single userspace.

Yum is showing you the installed kernels. Most likely, you are running the 3.6.10 kernel, although checking on it is as simple as running uname -a.

The additional lines are supplementary packages which add additional capabilities to the system. For example, the kernel -devel package is the entire kernel source. This allows you to rebuild the kernel or to build a custom module against that kernel.

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