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yeah, most of the time there's no NEED to recompile, but one still recompiles for psychological reasons...
=)
sometimes you need to apply a kernel patch or something and then you HAVE to recompile... or for example: kernel.org releases a new sizzling version of linux 2.4, but since it doesn't address any critical or security issues, your distribution decides to stick with the version it's currently using (and leave the new kernel for the next distro point release), so they don't give you a binary of the latest kernel... if you know how to compile your own kernel you can get the latest and greatest source code version from kernel.org and put it to work for you...
there's lots of reasons why people need to recompile the kernel, but most regular linux users won't ever need to do it...
keep in mind that some distros heavily modify the kernel source code from kernel.org, and in those cases your personally-compiled kernel.org kernel won't end-up with the same flavor (this could be a good or a bad thing depending on you)...
other distros (like slackware, for example) try not to make ANY unnecessary changes to the kernel.org source code...
all in all, it's good to know how to compile your own kernel, even if you don't ever actually need to do it...
at the very least, it'll make you more familiar with your system...
at the very most, well, it'll let you do something you wouldn't have been able to do without re-compiling...
=)
Last edited by win32sux; 08-26-2004 at 01:15 PM.
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