Re: pre-compiled kernels

On Thu, 2005-01-27 at 23:24 -0600, Andrew Gaffney wrote:
> 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.

Are you confusing the Universal InstallCD with the X-enabled LiveCD?

> 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?

You are exactly correct, which is why I have asked for this
functionality in the installer.  It would only need to copy the kernel +
initrd from the LiveCD, along with /lib/modules/* and everything would
work identical to the LiveCD.

> 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?

I tend to agree here.  Especially as you are not trying to remove the
choice to compile your own kernel, either via genkernel or manually.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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