On Thu, 2004-08-12 at 15:41, Erik Steffl wrote: > Lee Revell wrote: > > 99.99% of Linux users should use their vendor's > > kernel. It has undergone a LOT more stability testing than whatever you > > would compile off of kernel.org. > > > > You should only use a kernel.org kernel if you need some feature or > > driver that your vendor's kernel does not provide, or, obviously, if you > > are hacking the kernel. If you go this route you should attempt to > > build a binary package for your distribution, then install that. This > > way you can post the packages somewhere, and other people who need a > > custom kernel for their own purposes can just download your packages vs. > > repeating all that work. > > I think he was asking a different Q: he was asking about advantages > of using compiled as opposed to pre-built kernel, you are comparing > distro kernel to vanilla kernel. > > IMO: in general I think it makes sense to compile kernel because you > get exactly what you need plus you can experiment with different setting > to see if you get better performance etc. I tend to use the kernel > source package for my distro (mostly because it can build a package that > can be installed, which takes care of having LILO option to boot former > kernel etc.) Yes, if you only have one or two machines to worry about, then by all means compile your own kernel. The performance increase and memory savings will still probably not be enough to make it worthwhile, but you will at least learn a lot. Once you are dealing with more than a couple of machines, then tweaking your kernel *really* becomes a waste of time. Red Hat has spent a *lot* more time tweaking their kernel than you ever could, and they are also a lot better at it. Also it's SO much easier to just pop a CD in a machine and in 30 minutes have a system that will just work, forever, versus spending half a day customizing the kernel to your hardware, only to get no performance gain and a few KB memory savings, and have it crash in a month due to some bug that RedHat already fixed. So, I am speaking more from my sysadmin background. Most Linux audio users are more interested in intensively tweaking one box rather than having to keep 100 of them just working. The requirements are very different. A good compromise is compiling your own kernel from your vendor's sources. Once you get it working, please post .rpms or .debs somewhere for others to use, especially if you applied some patch to get a feature that's not in the stock kernel. This is an excellent way for non-coders to contribute a lot to the open source process. Lee
