On laptops and other mostly standardized hardware from Dell, HP and Lenovo, wouldn't it make sense to make some custom kernels and maybe even a custom OS like Porteus that could run entirely in RAM? Hell, I bet some of the members here probably did it already for this hardware. I think putting them in this thread and making it a sticky would be helpful to noobs and experienced users so they wouldn't have to redo what has already been done well. Any thoughts to the contrary?

What's the point of a custom kernel? With Slackware's generic kernel and the correct initrd, your kernel will stay lean, but even running the huge kernel, you won't likely see any noticeable benefit compiling a custom kernel. And Eric (Alien Bob) has already started work on a live distro, called SlackLive. It can run completely in memory, or you can enable persistence and use it through reboots.

there is an extensive topic on the matter

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...os-4175458495/

this time I'll pass...

Thanks for the links. Homework in progress.

There's nothing wrong with running your own customized kernel. I do it. Many people on here do it all the time. Sometimes you need to enable certain extra settings that are disabled by default or apply custom patches for some applications.

bassmadrigal didn't state that it's wrong but just asked the rationale of doing that in this specific case. Reading the original post that's a sound question IMO. I am not sure what the OP really means writing a "custom laptop kernel" as he or she seems to imply that the same "customization" should more or less fit all laptop models of a specific brand. Which is wrong as even a specific model can often be shipped with different components coming from different vendors. So for instance doing a "make localmodconfig" will lead to different results for variants of a same model.

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In those cases, it's perfectly acceptable to run a custom kernel. But, as Didier mentioned, it didn't seem that was the reasoning for OP's request.

For the vast majority of users, Slackware's default kernels have all the support needed to fit the majority of hardware configs out there. Some people feel the need to slim down the kernel to only match their hardware (I used to be one of them), but with today's computers, most users won't see any noticeable improvement (measurable? maybe, but it isn't likely they'll actually notice it).

I'm not saying it is bad to have a custom kernel, but for many users, there's not much benefit to be gained by it other than the learning experience (which is a very good reason to compile your own kernel).

Having had some new, to me, hardware and a bit of spare time recently I bencharked both an Atom N450 and an Atom N570 netbook with 32 and 64 bit stock kernels and my own tweaked kernels.

The differences in performance between stock and my own kernels were quite unastounding, typically an improvement of about 1%, not a compelling argument in my opinion for the extra workload involved in tracking and creating the plethora of .configs required to cover all use cases. Indeed, for stock desktop machines, it's moving me away from my habit of compiling bespoke kernels for each machine here.

Where I will continue is for some of my older machines, ones that don't come anywhere near the published minimum requirements for Slackware, where any memory that can be clawed back is a win. Those boxes should really go in the bin though, they lose on power, noise and space to any virtual machine or Arm SBC, as it is they live only as challenges

If you are playing with anything like that you'll be able to compile your own kernel and more and wouldn't be satisfied with a stock kernel anyway, so, if you want it, do it yourself