Hi everyone!
So every distro detects your harware on boot time.
This should only need to be done the first time you install the os and if you change your hardware, right?
I'm on a laptop, the only hardware i can change is memory and harddisk.
I would'nt mind editing a config file 2 - 3 times a year if the boot time can be reduced...to half?
Would be neat if got an option upon boot: static or hardware detect.
What do you think about this?

Cheers!
Ajje

With modern kernels, and technology like UDEV, the kernel largely configures itself; it is simply a matter of comparing your available modules to the hardware, and seeing what clicks.

That said, the easiest way to minimize this (and your boot times) is to rebuild your kernel with all of your static hardware built in, and using as few modules as possible. Generally this will greatly increase your overall responsiveness, and will theoretically drop the hardware detection times to zero.

That said, changing your hard disk and amount of RAM is not going to cause the kernel to do anything differently then it was previously, as the kernel does not load specific drivers for those types of devices. Devices that need dedicated modules are things like sound cards, video cards, expansion cards, etc, etc. So there is really nothing you need to do kernel-wise in that situation (other than perhaps recompile the kernel with large memory support, if you got multiple GBs of RAM).

Thanks for your reply, i managed to install Gentoo and compile the kernel awhile ago...
Can you customize and compile the kernel for, lets say, openSuSe?