itsy-bitsy kernel?

[Hilde Bell]

In the test prep, the task in which we do what we did today, the instructions read:

Download and compile a kernel of your choice.

Could we choose a streamlined version of the kernel that installs quickly?

[Rich Simms]

Absolutely!

If you go back too far though you will end up spending more time to set up the earlier development environments. I've been playing with v1 and v1.3.1. The entire v1 tarball is only 1.2 MB! The make config step has only about 50 questions to answer. I need to tweak my development environment though because the compile step doesn't work with what we have on our v2.6 systems.

- Rich

[janischaffin]

i like your thinking! Between a smaller kernel and more RAM, things might go faster....

But when I tried to bump up RAM on my virtual at home, it wouldn't budge.. hmmm.

[marcromansky]

I suspect that any gain you would get will be offset by lots of hairpulling. Even if you get everything to compile nicely, any change in a program, or any new module you add might not be compatible with the old kernel and send you scrambling at a point when you have other fun things you would rather be doing. They add functionality and make things easier (when things go well) when they upgrade kernel versions