I'm looking at a dual core Intel chip (core duo or core 2 duo) for my next workstation. Question is will the 10.2 or 11.x kernel need to be specially compiled to support this architecture? If so, can I assume I would have to do so myself?

Thanks

\\Greg

Well if your running Slackware I hope you do most things yourself ;-) (just joking). Seriously though, any 2.6.xx kernel should handle it just fine. I would assume you'd use an newer kernel when you install it, like 2.6.15+. I know people running dual core's with kernels of that number or newer, so you should be ok.

EDIT: My distro is Gentoo, so I can't give you any tips on this, but I can assure you it will work.

While the stock Slackware distro will run on a dual core computer, it will recognise only one core and only some of your memory (up to about 800MB). Presently just about any installation that uses the stock 2.6 kernel will need the kernel to be recompiles to take advantage of features.

The friendliest kernel compile guide I've found is this one http://www.slackware.com/~alien/doku...kernelbuilding from Eric Hameleers.

As daunting as recompiling sounds, it's not that hard if you do a couple of things. First, do an oldconfig so you start with the config file from the stock kernel. Second, make sure your files system (Reiser, EXT3) is compiled in and not as modules and last, keep a backup of your current kernel so if the new kernel is broken you can boot the machine.

Dennisk

You have to compile your kernel with Symmetric multi-processing (SMP) support to use both cores. That may be a default option, I just checked my config on Gentoo and it was selected even though I'm using a single core processor. Guess it's time to recompile!

I concur recompiling isn't anything to be afraid of. I just recompiled my kernel so I could use the nVidia driver and to enable i2c support. It takes 10-15 minutes including reboot.