I am trying to have my system as fast as posible and was searching for custom kernels like zen-kernel, for example. But I didn't find any reason to use them, it doesn't seem they make that much of a difference. What do you think?

Kernels won't make your system run any faster than the hardware will allow. You could strip a kernel to barebones minimum trying to reduce the memory footprint, but that's about it.

To get a system to run faster you have to do things like overclocking, replacing older hardware with newer and faster versions, and maybe adding more RAM, a faster hard drive, or faster CPU.

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Fast doing what? Please give some examples or tasks you'd like to accelerate else you could receive pointless advices.

Generally speaking, I don't think you'll gain, much customizing your kernel, and fast hardware can be a more important factor than software optimization.

PS ReaperX7 was faster

Ok, let me explain myself better: I often see those people, like the ones developing/using them, saying it is optimized/faster/whatever. It seems that isn't the case.

I know your question is not about Gentoo, but be careful to not fall into this trap...

HOLY COW I'M TOTALLY GOING SO FAST OH F***.

There is no magic incantation like "-OMG speed=150%". Just do the things that you understand, one by one, and gauge the result yourself on your own system.

As stated earlier, kernel-wise you can reduce the memory footprint and remove unneeded modules, but generally there are not any dramatic speed gains to be made there.

*** EDIT ***

I was not familiar with the "zen kernel" so I did a quick search and found a lot of 404 pages, including what appears to be the ZenKernel home page on the buntu wiki, which says:

... and leads to another 404...

So unless I missed something, the ZenKernel, whatever it was, is no more...

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Zen is supposed to be some kind of universal desktop kernel for everyday usage. To be honest, it's not really that great. It's often best to stick to the kernel provided by your distribution, or built yourself.

There is liquorix too (and many others), but it seems to be worse than stock kernel
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...uorix_32&num=1

Oh, and by the way I am testing Gentoo (what a funny webpage lol) but I am still totally confused (I am not a very skilled linux user but whatever). I like the idea behind it and I like compiling stuff but I don't know if it is worth it and it is definitely not as simple as Slackware.

A new kernel compiled for your processor, will boost performance by a bit. Another thing I have found to increase performance is recompiling glibc, glib, and glib2 using '-march=native' in the Slackbuilds.

I am running a recompiled kernel and I am not seeing much difference. And I don't feel comfortable enough to recompile glibc, glib or glib2.

It depends, a different kernel can run faster, but usually not because of better optimization, but because a newer kernel may contain bug fixes that speed up the system. For example, kernels 3.11 and earlier had a bug in the ondemand CPU governor that was fixed in 3.12. Under certain circumstances and with specific benchmarks this bugfix could speed up the system up to 90%.
But usually you will increase performance to a much better extent if you rather compile your applications for your specific CPU or GPU. But don't expect wonders from that either.

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It's simple, just run 'lftp' to mirror the slackware directory you want for example:

Make sure the slackware version is right. Then edit the Slackbuild to contain '-march=native' for your architecture or for all if you are not sure. Then you run the Slackbuild as root, wait for it to finish, and then run 'upgradepkg --reinstall' on the package that is created.

moisespedro

I don't use Slackware.

If you are going to quote an old link about Liquorix kernels as per post number 8 you may not have observed that it appears to be dated 27 March 2012

rant starts.....giggles

and that is the point why I use and will continue to use it. Altho on Debian sid

reason

If there is a kernel security update or patch required I have always found that Steven Barrett AKA damentz does a great job of pumping out updates very quickly

now look at your repo for Slackware and tell me what is the kernel version?

I will attempt to show it via web pages ok

at time of writing this rant.....forgive me as I don't have slack installed to check YMMV

slackware
http://slackbuilds.org/mirror/slackw...s/VERSIONS.TXT
claims 3.10.17 for 32 bit

liquorix
http://liquorix.net/debian/pool/main/l/linux-liquorix/
claims 3.12-6 for 32 bit

sorry if I offend any one

rant ends

I usually use the kernel that ships with Slackware, but, I have compiled my own kernel before. Alien Bob (one of our lead slackware developers) has a good kernel compile guide that works very well:

http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=linux:kernelbuilding&s[]=kernel&s[]=compile