Two types of kernel ship with Slackware -- "generic" and "huge". Most(?) users use "generic", some use "huge", while still others build their own. What's your preference and why?

This is another friendly, informal poll! Please do not take it too seriously, and please do not criticize other people's choices :-)

For ages I stuck with the generic kernel shipped with slackware, however on my new laptop the hardware is better supported on some of the more recent kernels. I've been building my own kernels from the linux-stable git tree using the config from slackware-current. It's pretty handy, whenever there is a new release I can just checkout the new git tag and rebuild.

Huge, I am too lazy to make an initramfs and my laptop is well supported.

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This^

Generic with initrd due to LUKS and LVM, support for both my personal and work laptops (3-4 years old) is great.

That^

I use the generic. I used to build my own, but have gotten lazy.

Huge. It simply works.

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What benefits do you guys get building your own instead of using the ones already compiled from a legit source?

generic

For a newbie, that's a cheap way to feel like a kernel developer.

Been there, done that (long ago).

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Before Slackware 14.2 was released I had to compile my own kernel for hardware support, as the machine was quite new at the time. After that I was doing it so I could run grsec, but that patchset has since gone commercial (aimed at businesses, no small-timers).

I build my own kernel. For best support for my GPU I need a relatively modern kernel, right now that means 4.10 or newer. Additionally there are some other settings I tweak like latency.

I selected both huge and generic, but in reality, I almost always use huge for simplicity's sake. Right now, I only use generic on one system, and that is because I frequently adjust my harddrives, so I need to reference them by UUID. To do that, it requires and initrd, so I figured I might as well run the generic kernel.

I usually only build my own kernel if there's some new feature I need, but I think my last custom-built kernel was a 3.18 kernel when some new features (hardware assisted video playback decoding) were added for my old video card (ATI HD3870). Right now, I'm running a 4.9 kernel from -current on my frankenstein 14.1 system.

EDIT: Once I build my Ryzen system, I may keep more up-to-date with kernels for the additions/optimizations that will likely make it in future kernel series.

All --

On my Current test box with an older processor, I run the most recent HUGE 4.9.y because I am lazy

On my Slackware64 14.2 Work Laptop, I have been running the most recent HUGE linux-4.4.y, mostly because I am lazy, have plenty of RAM and it boots as fast or faster than GENERIC.

Now that I've committed to the intel-ucode.cpio file for my Intel 6700K, I may start running GENERIC since I need an initrd anyway ...

Haven't decided yet ...

-- kjh

Huge.