On Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:00:24 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> Kyle wrote:
>> That's funny.  Been there.
> 
> "...I'm too late." ;-)
> 
>>> Do you have *any idea* how long it takes to compile the Linux kernel?
>>> I mean, damn, how *big* is it?? I thought the final binary was only a
>>> few KB in size...
>> 
>> The wait is even more fun the second time around, after you realize you
>> forgot to configure a necessary driver into your custom kernel. :D
> 
> I still don't entirely "get" why you would ever recompile the OS kernel.
> I mean, all it does is memory allocation, interrupt scheduling, etc.
> What's to change?

Driver support beyond what's in your shipping kernel.

> Also... Gentoo is the only Linux distro I've ever seen where compiling
> the kernel was actually successful. Every other distro managed to either
> spit cryptic error messages at me, or just leave me with a nonbootable
> system.

Well, I've compiled on RedHat and on openSUSE, as well as having 
installed Slackware and Linux From Scratch and compiled kernels for them.

Try LFS, that'll really teach you a lot about linux, even if you don't 
get a bootable system.

Jim

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