The first poll here:

How many times, in all your experience with linux, did you compile the linux kernel?

What was your biggest thrill in configuring the kernel and compilling it ?

There's no poll?

Either way though, I've only been running Linux for about a year now, so i've only compiled my own kernel 4 maybe 5 times. At that, i've only compiled it successfuly twice. But it was a fun learning experience. The best part about doing it myself it getting rid of all the stuff I don't need. I like running a slim kernel so that I don't have a bloated system.

EDIT: The poll appeard after I posted.

The biggest thrill was the speed I got out of my old Celeron 400. I can even run KDE on Debian Sarge and it's more responsive than Windows ever was...

Actually, the biggest thrill was the first time I did it and my system didn't blow up (newbie worries...).

Penguin of Wonder: I had to leave the computer hanging, and came back to finish the poll editing, therefore the lag... sorry about that

pljvaldez: I get thrills customizing my kernel too, removing junk and adding toys .

I wonder where I got the idea that linux could blow up boxes... I never had a kernel that actually fried hardware so far.

I've compiled kernels so many times, I've lost count. I've compiled kernels in the 2.0, 2.2, 2.4, and now the 2.6 lines.

Peace...

Same here been compiling kernels for over 8 years back in the 2.0 days to current 2.6.

Brian1

I've done it a few times. Sometimes to get hardware up and running. Sometimes cause the beer made it seem like a good idea.
Seeing a new kernel booting is a great feeling.

I never actually compiled a 2.2 kernel, only 2.4 and 2.6.

I wonder what linux looked like in 10 years ago.
I wonder what linux will look like 10 years from now, when we hit linux kernel 4.8 .

I love the thrill of compiling my own kernel.

I started compiling my own kernels in the 2.4.x releases. I can safely say I have probably compiled the kernel more than 100 times because I have been doing it a lot lately in Gentoo and I always compiled my own kernel when I used Slack.

I've done it three times (the only three times) in the past two weeks. The first time I was rushing and didn't pay attention to what I was doing. To my chagrin, it didn't work. The second time was a bare-bones, gimme a command line, and restore some of my self-esteem configuration. It worked, but alot of stuff didn't.

Third time was the go for broke, get my AMD 750Mhz, Irongate/Viper chipset, old Gateway mobo, ultimate gamer system working (don't be too jealous). When I typed reboot, hit enter, and everything I expected to work worked...BAM, I was hooked! As far as I'm concerned, the whole experience put the geek back into computer for me. Plus, it's a heck of a learning experience.

If I include the embedded system I like to play with, I've compiled the kernel at least 10 times. At any given moment I have four kernels I can have it boot, each fine tuned for a specific purpose. I usually end up forgetting something crucial (like the ethernet driver...it uses nfs for the root filesystem), but I learn more each time.

I can't count how many times I have compiled the linux kernel. The biggest thrill for me is when you boot into a new kernel and bam, whatever piece of hardware that wasn't happy before, is now happily crunching or storing data.

Can't remember if I compiled a 1.x kernel, but certainly 2.0 I've done a few. Use a lot of stock kernels, but usually compile on the main machine. Have needed patches over the years, like for win4lin, etc. Has to be way over 100 as I think I've compiled over 20 times this year alone...

Thrill? I just expect it to work It is nice when you do a major change like 2.6.15 to 2.16.6 and it works of first compile and the nvidia module compiles (after its own patch)...

What does "the distro's initial kernel" mean? I have never compiled a kernel (nor many other programs for that matter, nor plan to), but my distro (Fedora Core) comes out with very updated kernels every 2 or 3 weeks or so, with many of the latest features and fixes, and so I always have the most updated Fedora Core kernel. That's not what you call the "initial" kernel, is it?