Is there an option I need to pass/set in order to compile a i686 kernel??

There is an entire section of processor-type selections in the configuration menu.

Select the type that is closest to the processor-type that you run.

What are you trying to gain from compiling your own kernel though? I don't think you'll beat the -beyond kernel in [extra], iphitus has made something really nice there

I build my own kernels mainly for learning purposes. What's the difference between the -beyond kernel and regular kernels?

http://iphitus.loudas.com/beyond.php

It's in the Arch repos if you decide to try it.

I know nothing of AMD but still.. you seem to have a "Athlon XP 2800+" ?
Don't you need a k7 kernel then? Otherwise you might face slowness or crash maybe?
As said, you choose it during the kernel config: K7 and then it adds -march=athlon to compilation. See arch/i386/Makefile.cpu

I generally disagree with the notion that there is no benefit to compiling your own kernels. If you know how to do it, do so. If you don't, learn sometime.

Why? Because frankly there is a _lot_ of junk in any "canned" kernel. There has to be: the distributor has no way to know what hardware it might be running on. So there might be many dozens of modules that are trolled-through but never used; in-memory tables built in anticipation of capacity that your machine doesn't have. It's much more than just a consideration of processor-type.

One good reason to do it might simply be to dispel the mystery of it; or, the fear of it. You need to see the kernel for what it is... a memory-resident device-control program.

True, there certainly is however when I've built my own for a fair while and then gone back to the package to find no loss in performance then I'll stick with the easier route Makes sense to it's a hell of a lot quicker.
I'll agree with both of those though, it's always nice to know how to do something

That's the difference with windows:
if you don't need ppp,isdn,drivers for all eth cards, for video card,..
just remove them and recompile!
The kernel provided by distro is meant to run on every machine for every configuration so it includes all.

would i be asking for trouble by compiling my kernel with -march=athlon (i have an athlon cpu) - considering that most of the slackware packages are compiled using -march=i486 and -mcpu=i686??

win32sux, To get a faster responce, You should post a new thread with your question.

btw, That is called hijacking a thread, and when ppl log on to this forum, they won't see your question, (edit) no offence,

Kind regards, Glenn

(edit) But yes I do and it won't hurt if you do, until you change your cpu to something other that an Athlon.

You should leave i386 compatability enabled just in case

i know what thread hijacking is, thank you, and this is NOT thread hijacking... -march=athlon kernel optimization indeed became a part of this discussion ever since this post was made by nx5000:

Well from the kernel configuration:


Select this for an AMD Athlon K7-family processor. Enables use of some extended instructions, and passes appropriate optimization flags to GCC.

-march=athlon will be activated if you select processor familly ATHLON-K7.

As I said I don't know much about amd and how 686-optimized code could run faster than athlon-optimized code on an athlon.
Seems logical to me that you choose athlon-xp (and then have -march=athlon). Maybe there is something on google about 686 optimization on athlon?

I would say=> try it
But I'm not sure you will really see a difference...

I think it's easier to do "make config" in your kernel source directory, or, even better, install libncurses-dev (I don't know the exact name of the package) and do "make menuconfig". You'll have plenty of configuration options, and once everything is ready do "make && make install"
In fact, I've never tried mixing a few gcc options into the recent makefiles or into the command line...
PS: I've posted a few other things in the "how many times have you compiled your kernel" poll...