Gentoo Developers Exploring The Possibility Of Shipping Distribution Binary Kernels

[tildearrow]

>Михаил Коляда
What a great usage of Russian, comrade.

Mihail Kolyada

[240Hz]

gentoo is all about choice, but i think this is a dumb idea.

LOL, that makes no sence; Why not just push a better defconfig? ( the kernel is one of the few things I do install from source )

Nobody is forcing you to use it.

[duby229]

Kernel configuration does burn you out. Fo Sho. It's just so huge, it takes a while to flip through all the menu's and deselecting everything you don't use. I mean once you've done it a few times you pretty much know what flags are required and the rest is just deselecting. Of course I've been using the same .config for years plus or minus different drivers. you just have to make sure to run make oldconfig first.

EDIT: Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention genkernel..... I rarely use it unless I'm building a live environment for USB. But very cool for that purpose.

[grigi]

Honestly, as a long-time gentoo user, I always disliked how high-touch kernel updates were in comparison to everything else.
A simple emerge @world would just build everything with my last configuration. But the kernel involved manual steps.

[scottishduck]

I always keep a known working kernel.conf in my boot folder but this definitely seems like a good option for people that struggle navigating kconfig

[Guest]

Expecting a user to figure it all out is a bit much.

But normal users aren't meant to try Gentoo.......

[nvaert1986]

I actually think this is a good idea for new users, as it'll help them in the process, as long as it remains a choice. As a long time Gentoo user I actually prefer to compile my kernels manually.

- It's only a matter of minutes and doesn't take a lot of effort.
- It gives me a small and lean (5 MB) kernel, with exactly the features I need
- It gives better overall security (as features which could contain exploits might not have been compiled)
- It gives a smaller chance for bugs (as features which could contain bugs might not have been compiled)
- It makes the kernel boot process finish in less than 1,5 seconds

1. Just copy over your .config file
2. Re-compile or run make oldconfig
3. Copy the kernel image to /boot
4. Run grub-mkconfig -o /boot/kernel-xxxx
5. reboot and done.

I've compiled a lot of kernels for a wide variety of systems and never had any serious issues after kernel updates. Just make sure you keep your former kernel as backup kernel in case your system doesn't boot and you'll be fine :-)

For the new users: Use the Help function in the make menuconfig menu as it's very informative and helpful and most items have been well documented. The same goes for the online documentation Also searching on the internet helps a lot with explaining everything and it really teaches you how the heart of your operating system ticks and how all components work and what it's used for. In the beginning it can be frustrating, but it's an excellent learning curve in an understanding to features and hardware.

[schmalzler]

If you need a vanilla kernel binary on Gentoo, go back and install Arch.

I'm a longtime Gentoo user. But I was sick of maintaining it on a really low end Laptop. Installed arch. It went really smooth. Until I closed the lid.
Kernel OOPS... I never ever had to do anything special, suspend always worked out of the box with Gentoo (and even opensuse). But Arch oopses. Luckily disabling pm_async fixed the issue. This is a ThinkPad, btw.

And @all I don't know why compiling your own kernel is so much work for you. You figure out ONCE all the options you need. If you update your kernel simply copy over the .config file, run make oldconfig (which may ask some questions if new options are available) and you are done with configuring, nothing special needed.

[Naib]

As a long time Gentoo user who has on occasion been careless with my kernel updates, having a known working binary in my back pocket would be a godsend. And not just for non-booting kernels. I think last year the default kernel config changed to not recognize PCI USB controllers unless you explicitly enabled an option for it. So USB keyboards and mice on desktop PC's were dead until you could figure that one out in an ssh session...

This is why you always have two kernels in your /boot. The previously known booting one and the one you just configured.
I learnt that in the 90's with Mandrake

[Naib]

Also doing a dummy run (for the lulz). it is essentially the archlinux config and then compiled locally. Now I do wonder whether they honor the choise of openrc or systemd for the init, ill see in a moment