• Val_B
  • #! CrunchBanger
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  • From: SE United States
  • Registered: 2010-01-25
  • Posts: 238

Topic: so I compiled a kernel today...

Well I have been using Linux since 2000 and this is the first time I ever have actually compiled a (self) customized kernel. To be honest there was never much of a point before, but my netbook's Intel Atom n270 mediocre performance finally made me decide it was worth trying and I figured since I am replacing Mint 7 with Gentoo on it I might as well try something different.

Amazingly it was very, very easy lspci, lsmod, The gentoo handbook, and the occasional google search provided every bit of info I needed. It does really seem to help speed wise to take out drivers that are for hardware that isn't on my machine, even though I didn't compile anything as a module, not even alsa which I read is better off being a module.

In an case the only real hassle came from my touchpad which seemed to act crazy (sometimes it would work most of the time it wouldn't) despite having the proper kernel support but, after much searching apparently the passing the parameter "i8042.reset" to the kernel solves the issue, now it works great.

Now this has me thinking, I wonder if the debian kernel is this easy to change? I noticed with the "verbose" kernel option that my debian setup waits a bit before it spits out an error about my lack of PC speaker, it is probably less than a second in lost boot time, but I can't seem to leave well enough alone.

  • From: Fort Worth, Texas
  • Registered: 2010-04-07
  • Posts: 1,498

Re: so I compiled a kernel today...

Cool. For myself, I've never done it because I've never stuck with one distro long enough that I wasn't looking to do a full re-install of the who OS in a few months anyway, so why bother.

I have the same CPU in my Acer netbook, running Stadler-Alpha, and it just flies along, so I don't want to mess up a good thing, but something to keep in mind...

Have you got more than one desktop loaded? OpenBox and Xfce are supposed to be easier on system resources than Gnome or KDE, so if you tried one over the other and found one more sluggish than the other, that would be interesting, too.

Death and I have a working relationship.
Anyone touches my coffee I send him some business.  Sector11

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  • Val_B
  • #! CrunchBanger
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  • From: SE United States
  • Registered: 2010-01-25
  • Posts: 238

Re: so I compiled a kernel today...

Well, currently everything runs openbox, but I have ran Gnome, KDE4, KDE3, and severel other WM/DEs and they all ran alright, but nothing was "snappy" on my netbook like is on my AMD Phenom or even my AMD Athlon XP desktop. It ran without any major issue but, it was always at 20+% CPU usage, right now I got it at 4% avg cpu usage and 50MB ram use with openbox and tint2 at idle, Nothing I could do in Jaunty could get me down that low and still have x11.

I may at some point add KDE (I really like 3.5 and the later releases of 4.4+)in addition to openbox on some of my systems but, running KDE4+Openoffice+QMMP+Deluge+Seamonkey at the same time (which is pretty normal daily use for me) could make that Atom n270 stay at 80% the whole time, and that feels really sluggish.

  • From: New Amsterdam, U.S.
  • Registered: 2010-06-13
  • Posts: 425

Re: so I compiled a kernel today...

I'm trying to fix some old ladies computer with like 200mhz of CPU. Maybe I'll compile my own kernal when I put Debian on it XD

XFCE User ~ Linux Abuser ~ Rubbish Refuser
[img]http://achievements.schrankmonster.de/Achievement.aspx?text=First%20Tiling%20WM%20-%2050G[/img]
  • From: Bigfoot Country
  • Registered: 2010-06-12
  • Posts: 1,351

Re: so I compiled a kernel today...

@val_b, Congrats!  haha  While it's not really practical, I  think everyone should compile one at least once.  Just to know the inner workings of your OS, that's even true for *BSD.  Klanger would probably agree.  Question, did you mostly use genkernel in the past for your kernel on Gentoo?

Run tell that, homeboy.  -Antoine Dodson

rstrcogburn's Website

  • From: New Amsterdam, U.S.
  • Registered: 2010-06-13
  • Posts: 425

Re: so I compiled a kernel today...

rstrcogburn wrote:

@val_b, Congrats!  haha  While it's not really practical, I  think everyone should compile one at least once.  Just to know the inner workings of your OS, that's even true for *BSD.  Klanger would probably agree.  Question, did you mostly use genkernel in the past for your kernel on Gentoo?

I think it's very practical actually, if you have an older or cheaper PC then you'll need to trim as much fat as possible to stay light and fast.

XFCE User ~ Linux Abuser ~ Rubbish Refuser
[img]http://achievements.schrankmonster.de/Achievement.aspx?text=First%20Tiling%20WM%20-%2050G[/img]
  • Val_B
  • #! CrunchBanger
  • Offline
  • From: SE United States
  • Registered: 2010-01-25
  • Posts: 238

Re: so I compiled a kernel today...

rstrcogburn wrote:

@val_b, Congrats!  haha  While it's not really practical, I  think everyone should compile one at least once.  Just to know the inner workings of your OS, that's even true for *BSD.  Klanger would probably agree.  Question, did you mostly use genkernel in the past for your kernel on Gentoo?

Yes, previous to this I used Genkernel, and I never had any problems with it but, It is nice to be running something custom. Genkernel can be recompiled with different options too, but I never really got into really changing things with it as my desktop's hardware was already well supported and I had power to spare.  I think I am going to dig into the internals a bit as I have a few features compiled in that are listed as experimental and I want to see what difference it makes, I will definitely backup my kernel first however.