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

[choo at actcom.co.il]

(top-posting. yey!)

just as an example - we are using CentOS at work. We needed to
touch something in the kernel - so we changed the code and
compiled it. we Stumbled into bugs in various
networking-related packages - so we took the srpms, read the
source and fixed some bugs. we had a kernel crash bug - and we
had a dump that allowed us to find the cause of the bug - and
sending a report to the relevant mailing list - someone made a
fix, and we could back-port it into our (centos) kernel and
solve the issue.

we had varius problems with python, so we could delve into
python's source code and understand what is causing them. we
also read parts of the code of glibc to understand why some
APIs don't work as we expect them to work.

so, linux is still open source, when you're on the side of the
developers. it takes more then in the past to do things,
because the system is more complicated and contains much more
packages and much more lines of code.

--guy

---- Original message ----
>Date:   Mon, 24 Jan 2011 23:12:48 +0200
>From:   Oron Peled <oron at actcom.co.il>  
>Subject:   Re: [Haifux] No! No! Don't compile your kernel!  
>To:   haifux at haifux.org
>Cc:   Shachar Raindel <shacharr at gmail.com>
>
>   On Monday, 24 בJanuary 2011 22:11:49 Eli Billauer
>   wrote:
>
>   > ... It was easy enough to do for real. And I had
>   this feeling
>
>   > that the system was meant to be hacked. It
>   belonged to me. And that's
>
>   > fading away, most likely because nobody really
>   seems to care about this.
>
>   > Linux is becoming a piece of opaque spaghetti, but
>   it's OK as long as
>
>   > yum this or apt-get that trades one bug for
>   another. Spaghetti is not
>
>   > free software. Not in any sense.
>
>   1. You should not be too worried about "the lost
>   art" of kernel
>
>   compilation from sources.
>
>   Yes, only a tiny fraction of Linux users today
>   compile their
>
>   kernel (gcc, whatever)., but comparing fractions is
>   a mistake.
>
>   The *number* of people doing these compiles today in
>   comparison
>
>   with, say, 15 years ago is many-fold.
>
>   It's simply that we now have many more people who
>   are *only users*
>
>   and should take their needs in account *as well* --
>   It doesn't mean
>
>   we have less *developers* or that "very few" can do
>   this the "old way"
>
>   2. The system in general *is* more complex today
>   than 15 years ago.
>
>   But attributing this purely to developers
>   "surrendering" fashion is
>
>   ignoring the real changes that affected Linux during
>   this time:
>
>   a lot more architectures, more cpus (numa), dynamic
>   peripherals
>
>   (scsi, usb, hot-plug pci, etc), hot-plugable cpus
>   and ram (balloning)
>
>   virtualization, embedded systems.
>
>   And please note I only mentioned hardware related
>   changes, ignoring
>
>   functional changes (e.g: desktop integration)
>
>   So not only you can compile your own stuff today,
>   many of us do this
>
>   pretty routinely (you cannot evade it completely in
>   embdeded space yet).
>
>   However, if you want to compile key parts of a
>   modern *desktop* you'll
>
>   simply have to work harder.
>
>   BTW: the apt-get/yum mentioned before in this thread
>   would also help you
>
>   compile on your own because they can both bring you
>   the build
>
>   dependencies (and document them for you) and also
>   contain the
>
>   steps required for the build (which you can compare
>   with your
>
>   manual process if you have problems).
>
>   Don't worry ;-)
>
>   --
>
>   Oron Peled Voice: +972-4-8228492
>
>   oron at actcom.co.il http://users.actcom.co.il/~oron
>
>   "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we
>   exchange apples then
>
>   you and I will still each have one apple. But if you
>   have an idea and I
>
>   have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each
>   of us will have two
>
>   ideas." -- George Bernard Shaw
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