I am building a custom 64bit kernel with this hardware:
AMD Athlon II 245 (regor core, K10)
Asus M2NE AM2 motherboard
4 x 512mb DDR2 667 wintec memory (in ganged mode)
EVGA 8800gt (g92 core, 65nm)
This computer is hooked up to two monitor and a four way KVM switch (which has a monitor and 2 USB devices on it). I plan on using this computer for C programming, general linux experimentation, web browsing, and multimedia. I want to network it with both a linux and OSX machine, and I want to provide support for Wake on LAN features. Sleep modes need to work flawlessly, as well as dual monitor displays. If there are any features that are 100% essential to any of these tasks, please let me know so that I can make sure I have them enabled
. I would really appreciate it.
I have gone through and disabled a heck of a lot of stuff, taking some effort to read the help files and do some research, as well as use common sense.
I have some questions though:
EFI: This only pertains to macintosh hardware, correct? There are several EFI settings in device drivers and processor settings that I think I can disable, but am not sure.
Sound cards: I am using an ADI AD1988 integrated sound card on this computer. The options for how sound cards are enabled is odd though. I am thinking it is ok to disable "support old ALSA API", USB, PLMCIA, and PCI sound device menus? Is this chipset supported by the linux kernel, I am not sure? Help on that would be great.
Networking: There were a lot of drivers for networking devices I know I don't have. I enabled only the one for Nforce ethernet on Nvidia/AMD chipsets. Is this correct?
What does it mean exactly to have a kernel based virtual machine? I plan on using this computer for coding (in C) and basic file sharing/remote desktop purposes. What one of these virtual machines be useful? How are they different from others?
There where several options for voltage and current regulator support. I am an avid overclocker and underclocker, would enabling any of these allow me to adjust the core voltages on my CPU within linux?
There was an option for multimedia support that was disabled by default. How does this effect multimedia in general? Would I need to enable this to support playing popular file types and media devices?
I have a PCI Express GPU but the kernel has options for AGP graphics. Is it safe to disable all of these?
There were options for backlight & LCD device support as well as display panel/monitor support. What exactly do these drivers do? Will I need them to support dual monitor or standard LCD correctly? The description under help mentioned a lot about PDA's and mobile devices, I assume I don't need them?
I know this is a lot of questions to jam pack in one thread. Help with any of them would be much appreciated