[sclug] Building a kernel

[David Given]

Dickon Hood wrote:
[...]
> My current favourite for simple ease of use within the package management
> system is Debian.  It can be a pain in the proverbial to install, but once
> it's in, the 'apt-get install $PACKAGE' and it handling everything
> (dependencies etc.) for you just makes life exceptionally easy, especially
> for a desktop when you're demanding multiple user applications with (eg.)
> lots of odd graphical library requirements, and generally want to upgrade
> to the latest versions a lot.

If you want to try Debian, you're strongly recommended to get a Knoppix 
CD. It's a bootable CD that turns your machine into a Linux workstation 
without touching your disk at all --- great for trying things out 
without installing anything. It comes with KDE, Mozilla, OpenOffice, 
development tools, the lot. Plus, it's got superb hardware detection 
that will usually just work on any PC.

And, if you decide you like it, you can tell it to install itself onto 
your hard disk, hardware settings and all --- and once it's done so, it 
turns itself into a Debian installation that you can use standard 
package management tools to administrate.

http://www.knoppix.net/

[...]
[re kernel autoconfiguraiton]
> Pah -- that's cheating :-)

It may be cheating, but I would still like the several weeks worth of 
spare time it took to get my DVB card working (currently streaming 
digital _The Prisoner_ off BBC4 onto my hard disk very nicely, thank-you 
very much, although its far more sensitive to signal strength than my 
Freeview box).

There *are* such things around, but I've never found one that worked, alas.

-- 
[insert interesting .sig here]