Dear All,

I am new to Linux Questions. I am interested to learn a little bit about Bedrock Linux.

I am a gentoo and debian linux user.

I recently tried compiling a kernel in gentoo that could be ported and used in a debian install I have on the same machine.

See the discussion here:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1096872.html


This proved difficult to achieve in practice.

I wondered if Bedrock Linux could help me achieve a "compile kernel once run it anywhere" solution at least for distributions
combined together using Bedrock.

Comments appreciated


Regards

Michael Fothergill

Bedrock Linux is a meta distro made up of parts of other distros. It lets you mix-and-match features from other distros for use in a Bedrock system. If you want one feature from Debian and another feature from Gentoo, you can (probably - depends on the specific features) install both in a given Bedrock system.

With respect to specifically kernels, Bedrock can use most major distro kernels. You can install Debian's kernel, or Arch's kernel, etc. You can use Gentoo's kernel as well, but you have to be careful to ensure you include features needed by the rest of the system. If you compile out support for your filesystem, there's nothing Bedrock can do to help make the resulting kernel work with your filesystem. If you want to use software from Debian, but also specifically a Gentoo kernel, Bedrock can help there.

A notable subset of the features Bedrock can get from other distros includes their package building software. You can use Bedrock to install, amongst other things, Debian's dpkg-dev package which provides the dpkg-buildpackage command you were missing in the forums.gentoo.org link. If you want a system that includes a number of Gentoo packages, but also includes Debian's dpkg-dev package, Bedrock can help there.

That having been said, I don't know what this gets you. In the forums.gentoo.org link you seem to have abandoned using any Gentoo-specific features like emerge to make this kernel. You also state you're dual booting with Debian. Since you're not using anything Gentoo-specific, and you are using a Debian specific package, and you have a Debian install readily available, the most reasonable route seems to be to just build the kernel package in Debian and not involve either Bedrock or Gentoo at all.

I should also point out that when Bedrock pulls in features from other distros, it also ends up pulling in their complexity. A Bedrock system composed of both Debian and Gentoo software is going to be more confusing to work with than either Debian or Gentoo would be by itself. Based on some of the comments you've made in the forums.gentoo.org link, I suspect Bedrock is only going to exacerbate some of your difficulties. If interest remains, it may be worth revisiting down the line when you've gained more experience with Linux systems.