From: "Tony Ingenoso" 

I just goveled my way through a Debian install and wanted to try playing
with some kernel hacking to see if some 386 assembler optimizations I've
discovered via a code inspection would pan out.  Since they're pretty
mechanical transformations of fat/slow into equivalent small/fast
instruction sequences I expected minimal pain (other than that the
"as" syntax and GCC inline asm was initially pretty cryptic for a
guy raised on the Intel/MASM/TASM syntax.).

Naturally, the kernel source was NOT part of the install.  Foolishly, I
used that abominable torture tool  "deselect" to D/L the src for
this release. deselect was designed by masochists - it harkens back to the
bad old days of 1982 DOS app usability.  Surely there is a better way than
this arcane POS.

Then, there's about 50,000 web pages on how to recompile a kernel - all
giving somewhat different directions and referencing several different
snarky tools that are supposed to "help" you do it.  I gave up
and did it the apparently old fashoned way of "make config" and
answering its not very well described questions.  "make config"
is hardly complete or definitve, so manual makefile editing will still be
required.

I've come to the conclusion that the whole thing is designed to be
intentionally difficult as a rite of passage sort of thing.  The
"priesthood" is very much alive and well in the Linux community.

"Frank Haber"  wrote in message
news:426be6f2$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> ..but this guy sure captured the bad taste in my mouth, all too-well
> remembered, during a coupla my battles with CUPS, Samba, and..., well I
don't
> want to rub it in.
>
> http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html
>

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