> On Wed, May 31, 2006 at 03:17:08PM +0100, Adam Stiles wrote: > > The best kernel for your system is always one you have > compiled yourself. > I think that's a load of crap. The majority of systems work perfectly
> with one of the debian provided kernels. I agree, mostly. If you use a packaged kernel, you end up with the same compiled code and drivers that you would have if you compiled it yourself. However you sometimes need drivers that aren't compiled in or modules included with the packaged ones. Ndiswrapper and mppe are two that come to mind. In this case, you have to get the patches for these, which are in dselect, and compile your own kernel. > > Get yourself some kernel sources from kernel.org, the > .config file for There isn't a need to do this even if you want to compile your own kernel. You should really install kernel-package; this will give you the tool make-kpkg, which should be used to make kernels in Debian. It will work with source packages (linux-source-2.6.x) that are installed through dselect, and will create debs of the kernel image and headers. After all that trouble, you might find that the sources won't compile, or you might end up with no console or even no boot disk, because you didn't select the driver for your SCSI card, etc. It is best to start off with a packaged kernel until you get the hang of building your own for your machine. -- Bhaskar S. Manda