I am a gentoo user, so I work on /usr/src/whatever-version/ directory. It is a part of the system upgrade, and I perform all the system maintenance and upgrade from a root terminal.

Having done several custom builds of both linux and FreeBSD i prefer to go the FreeBSD route and do my customizing with symbolic link ta a /root/kernels/kernel dirertory in /uar/src/sys/arch/conf .

I've always used /usr/src/linux linked to /usr/src/kernel-version I'm wanting to compile.

I rarely need over 1gb for compiling, I don't compile many big packages, kernels don't need that much space. That said, sometimes I forget to clear some junk out of /tmp before compiling and I have run out of RAM, not fun when you have no swap either.

I do it in $HOME because Linus told me to 11 years ago --> http://www.linuxfocus.org/common/src...0/erratum.html