[Haifux] No! No! Don't compile your kernel!

[Shachar Raindel]

On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 12:54 AM, Eli Billauer <eli at billauer.co.il> wrote:
> In my case, I've had two reasons lately: One was because I wanted new
> hardware to be supported on an outdated distribution, and the second was
> because I wanted the kernel to support root on NFS without an initrd.
>
> I agree, that both issues have workarounds. In particular, most people
> upgrade the whole system when hardware isn't supported. As for the root on
> NFS, I could alter the initrd to do the job necessary, and go on with that.
> I had my reasons not to take that path.
>
And for both issues, if you were a company and not a home user, the
risks of replacing a major software component with a version that
haven't been tested and properly integrated with the rest of the
system would have been far worse than the risks of "root on NFS
through initrd" and "small part of my hardware isn't supported by an
extremely outdated system".

> Anyhow, the issue here is that compiling from sources is getting less and
> less common, which in turn makes the sources more and more difficult to
> compile. In the past, I maintained my system with compiling tarballs, and it
> was quick and easy. Today, I pray when going ./configure, even on an
> up-to-date system.
>
Have you tried Ubuntu recently? If I have package X, and I want to
tinker with its source files, all I have to do is:
sudo apt-get build-dep X
apt-get source X
cd X
<tinker with source files>
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot

And if I skip the tinker stage, build is 100% sure to succeed.


> And to take this issue to a broader scope: If the source becomes difficult
> to compile, we slowly drift towards losing the edge of free software. When
> only large corporates will have the knowledge and patience to compile from
> source, it won't matter so much whether you can obtain it or not. If nobody
> except corporates dig into the gory details, we will all end up depending on
> them. And they will, at best, allow us use of the software they distribute
> free, as in beer.

How do you find information on the web? Who makes your Shampoo? Who is
providing your Internet connectivity? We are dependent on big
corporations for our everyday life whether you like it or not.
Therefore, it shouldn't come to you as a surprise that it is a little
bit like this with software as well. However, having the source code
available means that even random people like us can compile it and
tinker with it (note how easy it is to do that in many distros, such
as Ubuntu and Gentoo). Much better than your situation with
web-search, or with Shampoo.

--Shachar