On Mon, 08 Dec 2008 13:31:27 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> http://xkcd.com/456/
> 
> Mmm... I did this.
> 
> Do you have *any idea* how long it takes to compile the Linux kernel? 

It depends.

On a lot of things, like how fast your system is, whether it's multi-core 
(if made with -j that will do parallel compilation, speeding things up a 
bit), how much memory you have, how fast your disk I/O channel is, memory 
channel, etc.

> I
> mean, damn, how *big* is it?? 

It depends.

On a lot of things, like which modules you compile into the kernel, 
compile as kernel modules, or don't compile.  Also on which options you 
actually enable.

> I thought the final binary was only a few
> KB in size...

It depends.

On my 64-bit system, the kernel is about 2.1 MB in size, but that doesn't 
include 108 MB of modules for this specific kernel.

> Oddly, X11 also takes forever.

It's a lot of code, video drivers for many different types of cards.

> (It's no surprise however that Firefox and OpenOffice are slow as hell.
> Oh, and KDE... *very* slow!)
> 
> Damn, I really don't know why the hell I did that...

Well, now you've learned something - LFS does take time. :-)

Jim

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