How many times did you compile your kernel?
 

The first poll here:

How many times, in all your experience with linux, did you compile the linux kernel?

What was your biggest thrill in configuring the kernel and compilling it ;) ?

There's no poll? :scratch:

Either way though, I've only been running Linux for about a year now, so i've only compiled my own kernel 4 maybe 5 times. At that, i've only compiled it successfuly twice. But it was a fun learning experience. The best part about doing it myself it getting rid of all the stuff I don't need. I like running a slim kernel so that I don't have a bloated system.

EDIT: The poll appeard after I posted.

The biggest thrill was the speed I got out of my old Celeron 400. I can even run KDE on Debian Sarge and it's more responsive than Windows ever was...

Actually, the biggest thrill was the first time I did it and my system didn't blow up (newbie worries...).

Penguin of Wonder: I had to leave the computer hanging, and came back to finish the poll editing, therefore the lag... sorry about that :)

pljvaldez: I get thrills customizing my kernel too, removing junk and adding toys :D.

I wonder where I got the idea that linux could blow up boxes... I never had a kernel that actually fried hardware so far.

I've compiled kernels so many times, I've lost count. I've compiled kernels in the 2.0, 2.2, 2.4, and now the 2.6 lines. :)

Peace...

Same here been compiling kernels for over 8 years back in the 2.0 days to current 2.6.

Brian1

I've done it a few times. Sometimes to get hardware up and running. Sometimes cause the beer made it seem like a good idea. ;)
Seeing a new kernel booting is a great feeling. :D

I never actually compiled a 2.2 kernel, only 2.4 and 2.6.

I wonder what linux looked like in 10 years ago.
I wonder what linux will look like 10 years from now, when we hit linux kernel 4.8 .

I love the thrill of compiling my own kernel.

I started compiling my own kernels in the 2.4.x releases. I can safely say I have probably compiled the kernel more than 100 times because I have been doing it a lot lately in Gentoo and I always compiled my own kernel when I used Slack.

I've done it three times (the only three times) in the past two weeks. The first time I was rushing and didn't pay attention to what I was doing. To my chagrin, it didn't work. The second time was a bare-bones, gimme a command line, and restore some of my self-esteem configuration. It worked, but alot of stuff didn't.

Third time was the go for broke, get my AMD 750Mhz, Irongate/Viper chipset, old Gateway mobo, ultimate gamer system working (don't be too jealous). When I typed reboot, hit enter, and everything I expected to work worked...BAM, I was hooked! As far as I'm concerned, the whole experience put the geek back into computer for me. Plus, it's a heck of a learning experience.

If I include the embedded system I like to play with, I've compiled the kernel at least 10 times. At any given moment I have four kernels I can have it boot, each fine tuned for a specific purpose. I usually end up forgetting something crucial (like the ethernet driver...it uses nfs for the root filesystem), but I learn more each time.

I can't count how many times I have compiled the linux kernel. The biggest thrill for me is when you boot into a new kernel and bam, whatever piece of hardware that wasn't happy before, is now happily crunching or storing data.

Can't remember if I compiled a 1.x kernel, but certainly 2.0 I've done a few. Use a lot of stock kernels, but usually compile on the main machine. Have needed patches over the years, like for win4lin, etc. Has to be way over 100 as I think I've compiled over 20 times this year alone...

Thrill? I just expect it to work :) It is nice when you do a major change like 2.6.15 to 2.16.6 and it works of first compile and the nvidia module compiles (after its own patch)...

What does "the distro's initial kernel" mean? I have never compiled a kernel (nor many other programs for that matter, nor plan to), but my distro (Fedora Core) comes out with very updated kernels every 2 or 3 weeks or so, with many of the latest features and fixes, and so I always have the most updated Fedora Core kernel. That's not what you call the "initial" kernel, is it?