Re: KISS Still Active

On Wed, 29 Jul 2026 23:15:35 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

> On Wed, 29 Jul 2026 11:51:00 -0400, jayjwa wrote:
> 
>> How many people reading this can configure and build a kernel from
>> zero by themselves? No looking at /proc/config.gz. No looking at
>> /boot/config*. No 'make oldconfig'. Just start with a blank config
>> and walk through the 10,000 options therein. You do know the chipset
>> in your USB ethernet, correct? Do you want support for Southern
>> Islands in your GPU? Thoughts on setting CONFIG_TICK_CPU_ACCOUNTING?
>> Hint: if you have an older Ryzen, you'll have to dive into the RCU
>> Subsystem menu.
> 
> So, just say “yes” to everything. The kernel developers themselves do
> that as a routine part of testing, so you know it’ll work. Let the
> kernel’s own hardware autodetection features sort it out.
>

Say "No" to all the security options.

Configuring and building the kernel "from scratch" is the best
learning experience available to any GNU/Linux user (not moocher).

All the config options are fully documented.  If one has a basic
understanding of hardware, file systems, memory management, etc.
then configuration is easy.

Every config option can be perused in less than 20 minutes but
once that is done the same options can be used over and over
in the future via "make oldconfig."

A surprising number of options are for security:

 CONFIG_X86_USER_SHADOW_STACK:                                                                  │  
  │                                                                                             │  
  │ Shadow stack protection is a hardware feature that detects function                         │  
  │ return address corruption.  This helps mitigate ROP attacks.                                │  
  │ Applications must be enabled to use it, and old userspace does not                          │  
  │ get protection "for free".                                                                  │  
  │                                                                                             │  
  │ CPUs supporting shadow stacks were first released in 2020.                                  │  
  │                                                                                             │  
  │ See Documentation/arch/x86/shstk.rst for more information.

These are best disabled for desktop workstations that are under
user control.

A surprising number of config options regard virtual machines
and should  also be disabled (unless one operates a public server
farm).

A lot of options regard OS programming:

 CONFIG_X86_BUS_LOCK_DETECT:                                                                 │  
  │                                                                                             │  
  │ Enable Split Lock Detect and Bus Lock Detect functionalities.

On-line research can help with those.

<https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/Documentation/arch/x86/buslock.rst>


Networking options are also quite extensive, but for a desktop
workstation with only an ISP connection only 4-5 options suffice.

The Linux kernel can accommodate many, many different computing
scenarios and it is ridiculous to rely on the "one size fits
all" kernel that is supplied by mainstream distros.

My advice is to spend some time to configure and build the kernel.
For puzzling options just ask questions.  Once accomplished
you, and your machine, will be much better off.





-- 
Gentoo/LFS: Is there any-fucking-thing else?