Assalam Alikum,

Difficult question, eh?
I want to recompile my RH 9.0 Kernel. I was told that it will help make my computer faster...since it will know everything about it while compiling...(excuse my language which tells you I am too bad at programming)
So, in the form of 1, 2, 3,... how may I do it (if you think it is a fun thing to be done, and that it will help my computeres be faster)

Max

I truely doubt it'll make your computer faster or achieve anything.

messing with kernels is overrated, its just a way for people to feel they're l33t hackers, the more mainstream and easy to use GNU/Linux becomes the less fun it is for the people who used it just top be different and prove their technical superriority, hence the popularity of distros like Gentoo.

tab3an this is all my opinion and of no particular use.

anyway this doc explains the steps
http://www.digitalhermit.com/~kwan/kernel.html

if you decide to do it, I recommend you first copy the kernel configuration provided by your distro, this way you'll have good sane defaults, then read the help for each config options, if you don't know what to do, leave it the way your distro did it.

the kernel config for the current booting kernel is usualy stored in /boot/config copy that to .config inside your kernel sources dir.

cheers,
Alaa

What happened to customizing things the way you want ?

Woba3dein, mat7'abatsh fel 7elal.

cheers,
Maher

sure customize it the way you want.

my point is there is little benefit in customizing the kernel.

distro kernels already compile everything as modules so you're not paying extra overhead for stuff you don't need (or let us say you're paying trivial overhead).
as I said I never felt any performance gain.

so unless you have special needs out of your kernel which the current kernel does not provide I don't see any point.

like I said its overrated.

anyway Mborn, you'll get to feel performance gains if you move to 2.6, it is truely much faster (or at least more responsive) than 2.4, so if speed is what you want give it a try.

cheers,
Alaa

thanks!

but should I use a patch or download the whole kernel?
Also, I have downloaded the modem driver for Motorola, and I need to install RH 9.0 on another machine to try it. Do you think if I patched the kernel, it will still work?
or should I live with two kernels? I mean to d/l the new kernel and have two options for booting?

Max

Check if the driver supports your kernel. If not then upgrade your kernel by applying the patchsets from www.kernel.org

cheers,
Maher