pre-compiled kernels

As much as I dislike the idea, I think we should provide a pre-compiled 
genkernel kernel on the new universal LiveCD. Before I start getting flamed, 
hear me out.

I just spent 2 hours waiting for genkernel to build a 2.4.28 kernel in vmware on 
an Athlon 1.3GHz w/192MB RAM allocated to the virtual machine...only to have it 
fail. Up until the kernel compile, the stage3 install took ~6 minutes from a 
blank disk.

Most people who use genkernel use the default config. In the current version of 
the installer, the only kernel options are genkernel and building a kernel from 
a .config that the user provides. If the user can't do 'genkernel --menuconfig', 
then they can't change anything from the default config. Why make them sit 
through the compilation when the output would be identical to a pre-compiled binary?

I myself would never use this feature, but I'm sure a lot of people would 
appreciate it. A genkernel generated kernel is one step away from a binary 
distro's provided kernel. Why not take that extra baby step to make a few lazy 
users happy?

-- 
Andrew Gaffney
Gentoo Linux Developer
Installer Project
http://dev.gentoo.org/~agaffney/