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Comment by jdub | Hacker News Reader

Points from the flip side:

- the Linux project is very likely to stick to simple, fast elements of Rust (based on the excellent approach of the Linux/Rust devs thus far)

- the more Rust is used, the more work will be done to improve its performance

- you can still build a kernel on a low-powered device... i've built kernels that took > 12 hours on, for example, PA-RISC boxes that were once regarded as beefy :-)

- most people don't (and shouldn't) compile their kernel, and by most I mean more than 99%

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Could you expand on why people shouldn't compile their kernel? I think it's fairly useful to compile their own to get a better understanding of what the kernel does and to better suit everyone's needs. For example, if I have little free space on my boot partition and I have my disk encrypted, I want my kernel to be as small as possibile, so I will deselect every driver I don't need. Or maybe the driver for my new device is not included in the kernel builds of my distribution.

Not only I woundn't say that most people shouldn't compile their kernel, I would say that most linux users* should do it at least once, so they can understand the power they have compared to closed-source operaring systems.

*with linux users I mean users that use linux as their main operating system, not people that do ssh once in a while or rarely boots their linux partition

using the same binaries shares the verification for said binary.

a modular kernel with a custom inird (generated by the distro) is small enough for most.

so if you are into adventures or you are in the business of kernel development yes roll your own. anybody else is better served standing on the shoulders of a maintained binary distribution.

Lots of reasons:

- everyone has better things to do than compile software they didn't write

- a good distro has probably tested it on a bunch of hardware, and hopefully signed it (or at least the packaging), so you know it was securely acquired and built

- you won't learn much at all about the Linux kernel by compiling it... you may learn a tiny introductory about about it by configuring it, but that's still not very much at all, really (it may seem like a lot when you don't know how to measure what you're learning)

- what you should learn from configuring and compiling a Linux kernel is that you don't ever want to be in a situation where you have to do it again (without a really spectacular reason, or being paid)

- if you're compiling a kernel because your boot partition is small... make it bigger, or don't have one at all. come on.

It will make less people compile their kernel, further concentrating decision-making into the hands of distributors.

With every year, abandoning OSS and looking for non-computing hobbies gets more attractive.

All that is fair. It's just, maybe a bit early? I don't usually say this, but I would've appreciated if it came a little later.

All I really want is to be able to compile my stuff without waiting overnight (or more).

It almost certainly won't be relevant to you, as a Linux kernel user, for a while anyway. So, it will be a little later.

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