On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:02:34 +0100, Dale <rdalek1...@gmail.com> wrote:
Alan McKinnon wrote:
On Monday 09 November 2009 00:20:45 Dale wrote:
What he said plus this little tidbit of info. When I built my first
kernel, I had no howto except for the basic instructions in the Gentoo
install guide. This was about 6 years or so ago and there was not a
lot
on configuring a kernel except for the options Gentoo needed. It took
me three tries to get one to boot and work pretty well and all of a
hour
at most. A lot of that hour was compiling the kernel.
Three tries Dale? Only three?
You deserve a medal for that. My first attempt took at least 10 goes
;-)
I didn't say it was perfect, I said it booted and worked pretty well.
Now getting the sensors, USB and some other odds and ends took a few
more. Once I got booted tho, I was ginning pretty good. You also have
to keep in mind, my system is not real complicated. Basically, chipset,
file system, and sound card to start with. USB was the fun one. I have
to have one USB driver for my printer and another for my camera. One is
the old style USB 1 and the other is USB 2 or something to that effect.
Point to the OP tho, once I had a good running kernel, make oldconfig
worked for years. I did have to build one from scratch a year or so
because things changed drastically and oldconfig got confused. So
basically, I have had to build from scratch twice in the last 5 or 6
years. I think that shows oldconfig works pretty good.
I do find this funny tho. Someone spends the better part of a day
installing Gentoo but doesn't think building their own kernel is worth
it. Most compiles take longer to finish than configing a kernel.
Dale
:-) :-)
I can only speak for myself, but part of what makes the "gentoo
experience" for me is knowing that my kernel, software etc. is built to my
basic needs. And building and configuring a kernel really doesn't take as
much time as you might spend on various unnecessary pursuits (ie. reading
webcomics, articles that can wait, reading the news that'll be broadcasted
to you later through a tv-news programme). But as others have said, if
you're not interested in spending time on making it tick, and just want an
easy fix, then go for a binary distro.
Of course, if you decide to read the book, well then, there's the off
chance that you might just find it interesting and read it, not because it
can be useful, but because it sparks your interest.
And no, configuring a kernel from scratch doesn't (take me) 5 minutes, but
the half hour it does take, are well spent.
--
Zeerak
