The Linux 3.16 Kernel Has Been Released

[caligula]

Is there somewhere a noob-friendly tutorial on how to configure a kernel build?
With an explanation for all the modules and what they are for and which to pick?
Are dependencies solved automatically?

Is it that easy to pick only the modules for your hardware, say Core2Quad-module, graphic-card-module, mainboard chipset, usb, spdif, hdmi, ac97, ext4, done?
I always used the config of my distribution kernel so far...thats why it needed forever...

Read the Gentoo docs. It's basically quite simple, but you need to know some Linux specific stuff. Ext4 is just [x] ext4 if you want ext4 + ext4 root support. For ac97 there are several options. Might be e.g. intel hdaudio nowadays. HDMI -- depends on your hardware, spdif -- depends on your hardware, usb -- you need to enable usb 1.x, usb 2.x, usb 3.x, usb mass storage, usb printer, ... Mainboard -- know the model and enable it, graphics card -- know the model and enable kernel mode drivers, core2quad -- enable core2 x86

[tomtomme]

If you compile yourself, why do you include support for stuff you don't have? Surely you don't plug in thousands of PCI/USB devices and use dozens of file systems?

Is there somewhere a noob-friendly tutorial on how to configure a kernel build?
With an explanation for all the modules and what they are for and which to pick?
Are dependencies solved automatically?

Is it that easy to pick only the modules for your hardware, say Core2Quad-module, graphic-card-module, mainboard chipset, usb, spdif, hdmi, ac97, ext4, done?
I always used the config of my distribution kernel so far...thats why it needed forever...

[caligula]

You mean a build similar to localmodconfig? Because a full build takes easily 15-20 minutes on reasonably powerful hardware.

If you compile yourself, why do you include support for stuff you don't have? Surely you don't plug in thousands of PCI/USB devices and use dozens of file systems?

[ChrisXY]

You might need to spend hour of your time trying to set everything up (configuration, compilation itself takes about 5 minutes at recent hardware) - it really isn't that hard or time consuming.

You mean a build similar to localmodconfig? Because a full build takes easily 15-20 minutes on reasonably powerful hardware.

[caligula]

but rolling distros are at least tested (openQA) and integrated a bit and they update ALL your software. To compile a kernel etc. yourself also needs more power and quite some time on slower machines. did this only once on my AMD E-350 apu since it needed over 1 hour...

Sorry but no, if you only compile what you need, it's around one minute or less on i3770k and definitely under 15 min on your Apu..

[tomtomme]

If you really want bleeding edge, just use git.

but rolling distros are at least tested (openQA) and integrated a bit and they update ALL your software. To compile a kernel etc. yourself also needs more power and quite some time on slower machines. did this only once on my AMD E-350 apu since it needed over 1 hour...

[tomtomme]

Switching disro just because your distro doesn't release rc kernel 5 minutes after Linus pushes it is silly.

Missing some humor today?
I was just joking. Of course, I would not switch a distro for this, too!
Of course I should have used this smiley - my bad...

Switching disro just because your distro doesn't release rc kernel 5 minutes after Linus pushes it is silly.
If you really want bleeding edge, just use git.
You might need to spend hour of your time trying to set everything up (configuration, compilation itself takes about 5 minutes at recent hardware) - it really isn't that hard or time consuming.

I mean, updating is this simple:

git pull
make menuconfig
make
su -c 'make modules_install && cp arch/x86/boot/bzImage /boot/kernel-git'

You will have to setup your bootloader to know that kernel is located at /boot/kernel-git, but that's pretty easy, generally.

[tomtomme]

Or just activate the testing repository.

or switch to openSUSE Factory - the new king of the rolling distros

[Perry3D]

[miffe]
Server = http://arch.miffe.org/$arch/

Or just activate the testing repository.