Can I use kernel-seeds on top of Ubuntu kernels?

Question

Former Gentoo user here. I'm trying to optimize the system by recompiling kernel specifically for my processor and disabling code I won't be using (to reduce memory consumption, improve speed etc.).

I wonder if anybody has lucky experiences with kernel-seeds on top of Ubuntu. Kernel configuration is a dark and deep forest and I'm not sure what would be the best strategy here since I'm concerned about Ubuntu-specific options. Should I start with Ubuntu's configuration and one by one disable the options i don't need or just start configuring it from scratch (default .config or kernel-seeds..) ?

Answer 1

First, why are you trying to compile a kernel ? If for learning, that is fine, but with anything resembling modern hardware you are not going to get a performance boost or significant hard drive space savings.

Second, the kernel seeds are extremely minimal. You then need to know your hardware.

Two tools to make it easier:

lspci -v

Will identify your hardware and the kernel modules in use.

You can also use localmodconfig

make localmodconfig

See http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_32#head-11f54cdac41ad6150ef817fd68597554d9d05a5f

IMO localmodconfig is a superior tool to starting with a (minimal) kernel seed and build up.

I started a web page for compiling kernels

http://bodhizazen.com/Tutorials/kernel

The other issue is the Ubuntu patches, most important Apparmor (see Where do I get the AppArmor 2.4 compatibility patch?) and ureadahead (see this bug report).

See the Ubuntu wiki kernel compilation for ubuntu specific information.