[ILUG] Fedora Core 5 Kernel Source Package

[Kenn Humborg]

> On Tuesday 21 March 2006 12:21, Hamilton, David (TSG C&I) wrote:
> > I have just installed FC5 x86_64 on my new laptop, but cannot find the
> > kernel source package anywhere on the DVD-ROM.
>
> As a matter of interest, why are people so keen to use the Fedora kernels?

Because they work?  Because they are less work to use?
Because they may include additional features used by other
packages within Fedora?  Because there are people who
spend their full working day patching and configuring them
so that I don't have to?

> I've never found anything particularly good about them,
> and prefer the standard kernel from www.kernel.org .

In the old days, Red Hat often added features to their kernels
before they were added to the standard kernel (I think inotify
was one example).  User-land apps patched by Red Hat could then make
use of these features (but, of course, would degrade gracefully
if those features were not there).

This is less of an issue now since the Fedora kernels are much
closer to www.kernel.org than back in the 2.4.x days, but I'd
guess it probably still happens.

This is an example:

   http://cvs.fedora.redhat.com/viewcvs/rpms/kernel/FC-5/linux-2.6-defaults-
max-symlinks.patch?view=markup

They've increased the max number of chained symlinks from 5 to 8.
IIRC, this is either for sysfs or handling the /etc/alternatives
stuff.  I bet you'd be pissed of if your MTA stopped working
because it ended up at the end of a 6-step symlink chain from
/usr/bin/sendmail.

And do you _really_ know the right answer to all the questions
asked when you do 'make config'?  Given your recent comments about
VMWare, I doubt it.

Later,
Kenn