From: Gregg N 

"Tony Ingenoso"  wrote in
news:42746d02$1{at}w3.nls.net:

> 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.

The debian packaging system is quite nice, actually. Dselect is just one of
several front-ends to the underlying packaging system dpkg. The
"d" stands for "Debian" in case you were wondering.

dselect  Character-based menu interface apt-get  Command line interface
synaptic GUI-based interface
gnome-apt Another GUI-based interface aptitude Another text-based interface

To configure a kernel, "make config" is the least helpful mode,
as it just decends the configuration file item-by-item asking you your
choice for each one, and doesn't allow you to go back a step if you make a
mistake. It is most useful when driven by something other than a human.

Instead, try "make menuconfig" which makes a character-mode
menu-based interface for browsing the configuration items. Or you might
like "make xconfig", which generates a GUI-based interface. All
of these save the same .config file. If either of these complains about a
missing graphics or other library, e.g., libxyz, just install it by
entering

apt-get install libxyz

and the package system will install it from the sources you've configured.

Gregg

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