[Courses][Linux comands] customizing a 2.4 kernel

[Terri Oda]

On Mar 24, 2004, at 10:30 PM, Carla Schroder wrote:
>> My question has always been "Why?"  ie what sort of things require
>> kernel-haking, or building?  How do we know this its the thing to do?
>
> 1. To add some functionality it doesn't have
> 2. To clean all the junk out of a stock kernel. The various distros 
> lard their
> kernels with all kinds of drivers and features you'll never need
> 3. To optimize it for your hardware. Many distros default to i386, 
> which is
> rather silly for Athlon and P4 users. Plus, I've noticed that many 
> times the
> architecture is wrong- on both my Red Hat and Debian systems, PIII was
> selected . Well both systems are Durons.
> 4. To fine-tune which things you want statically compiled, or loadable 
> modules
> 5. You might want to test some alpha features, such as NTFS write, or 
> CD
> packet writing, or some such

6. To learn!  Building a kernel really isn't very hard thanks to the 
menu systems, and you can learn a bunch about how your system works, 
etc.  I always like seeing the stuff marked EXPERIMENTAL because it 
lets me know what's going to be coming up.  Even if you don't want to 
try using your own kernel, it's worth building just to see how it all 
works.

7. To use strange binary drivers that don't work with the stock kernel 
from your distribution.  As a debian user, my stock kernel and the 
nvidia drivers didn't seem to jive, and although I was going to be 
building my own kernel anyhow I winded up doing it immediately because 
it took less time than hunting down a stock kernel that worked.

That said, I compile my own partially out of habit, partially out of a 
desire to optimize my system (I statically compile things I use all the 
time), occasionally for hardware reasons, and mostly because it amuses 
me.

  Terri