Annoyance: BAD Advice

On Saturday 27 September 2003 12:13, [email protected] wrote:
> > Furthermore, and unfortunately, I just don't know how, say, xconfig,
> > allows me to "compile a filesystem type into the kernel". I am an old man
> > with poor eyesight, limited attention span, and although I used to be
> > pretty smart I think I am losing it. :-) That's why I need all the help I
> > can get.
>
> If you just want a system to use and do Real Work on, why are 
> you compiling kernels at all?

Lug offers sage advice here.

Another general annoyance in liux land is the well meaning
but usually misguided  advice to newbies that they should go
get the source and compile their own kernel and "improve"
things.

The truth of the matter is that these days, after years of stuggle
by the kernel developers, the kernel is farily thin already
(relative to what it does) and huge chunks of things formerly
in the kernel are now in modules (where they belong). 

With most distros, there is VERY LITTLE reason to ever compile
a kernel and NO REASON WHATSOEVER for a newbie to
do so.  Yet all too often the advice to do is is offered to 
newbies or users with less than one years familarity with
linux, and exposure to only one distro.

Further, the advice is often floated around to compile some
drivers that are currently modules into the kernel and delete
other modules all together.

This in spite of the fact that the people who know VASTLY more 
about the kernel than those offering the advice went to a great
deal of effort to move these things OUT of the kernel and into modules, 
and a modual you don't use costs you nothing but a few 
bytes on the disk.

Don't get me wrong, if you want to play with compiling a
kernel by all means do so, but not on your ONLY computer
and not when you want it to work well when you are
finished.

Even expierenced users can not improve on very much
by compiling their own kernel, and unless they are trying
to use very minimal hardware or specialized hardware
or their distro of choice is so hopelessly lame that they
are forced to compile just to get it to work on modern
equipment.

You will learn more about linux by installing a totally
different distro than you will by watching a kernal compile
stream across your screen for a half hour (or two hours).

-- 
_____________________________________
John Andersen