Compiling a vanilla kernel tarball from kernel.org on Debian Stable/Testing. Firstly you need to download a vanilla kernel tarball from the kernel.org website. Once you have the tarball downloaded, type tar -jxvf linux-3.3.tar.bz2 and then follow the sequence below. This sequence of commands will build a pair of Debian *.deb packages in your home folder that you may then install onto your system making the compilation and installation of a Linux kernel very easy.
neo@deusexmachina:~$ cd linux-3.3/ neo@deusexmachina:~$ make mrproper neo@deusexmachina:~$ make menuconfig neo@deusexmachina:~$ make-kpkg clean neo@deusexmachina:~$ fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd --append-to-version=-custom kernel_image kernel_headers neo@deusexmachina:~$ su Password: root@deusexmachina:/home/neo# dpkg -i *.deb
Once this is completed, assuming you compiled the kernel in the ~/Downloads/linux-3.3/ folder, you would then type cd .. and then su to switch to the root user and type dpkg -i *.deb to install the Linux kernel and the kernel headers.
The listing below shows the Debian packages that are created in the folder below the kernel source folder. You do not need to build the kernel in the /usr/src folder, the ~/Downloads folder in your home folder is fine.
neo@deusexmachina:~/Documents$ ls -hula *.deb -rw-r--r-- 1 neo neo 7.5M Mar 25 18:52 linux-headers-3.3.0-custom_3.3.0-custom-10.00.Custom_amd64.deb -rw-r--r-- 1 neo neo 29M Mar 25 18:52 linux-image-3.3.0-custom_3.3.0-custom-10.00.Custom_amd64.deb neo@deusexmachina:~/Documents$
I am a computer enthusiast that has always been interested in maintaining and upgrading computer hardware. I was born on a farm and lived there for 13 years before moving into town. I was always interested in technology and my father always gave me good encouragement for developing my knowledge and interest in tinkering with computers. He was using a computer on the farm but that was in the very late 80`s and late 90`s. Seeing what a computer could do always fascinated me and then I knew that is what I wanted to do. The first time I used Linux was Red Hat 6.2 installed off a single CDROM and I was amazed that you did not need to install any more drivers on my old Intel Celeron machine to be able to enjoy a nice 24BPP desktop and use the GIMP to edit photos and enjoy playing the old Linux games like Xbill. Then a while later I tried Mandrake Linux 9.2 and I was hooked. It came with so much software and was very easy to use as well. Then Mandrake Linux 10 and on through FreeBSD, Debian 3.0, Debian 3.1 Suse Linux 9.2, Suse 10 and onto the Ubuntu distributions although I am using Fedora Core 15 and the Gnome 3 desktop at the moment.
debian is fine for a server, also is sl/centos (the new vriseon that’s coming out soon should have a decent kernel for these boards). personally, for my home server i use freebsd, which has never failed for me, and even more stable than linux.but i’d never use ubuntu for a server. maybe the 10.04 lts. maybe..