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Hey, I've been recently looking at editing and compiling a Linux kernel of my own. I have two Windows boxes running(one Windows 98, the other Windows XP Pro) and I do have a Knoppix boot CD. I want to compile this kernel under one of my Windows boxes and transfer the kernel to a boot CD so I don't have to partition one of my drives to install Linux. How should I go about doing this? Sorry, I know this is a general question so any info on this topic would be greatly appreciated. :)
I actually don't know if that is possible, even with Cygwin. I think Cygwin would be the only chance, and glibc or other problems could quickly crop up.
From where i see it there are two different things that might seem similar, you can have a Linux Boot Cd or you can have a Linux Live Cd.
Afaik a linux boot cd is like a bootdisk, it only contains the info to read your system from disk and it is usually used for booting into an existing linux partition when you have errors in that partition and a direct boot is troublesome or not possible (ie: it can be grub/lilo problems or initrd image that got errors), while a linux live cd is a compilation of a linux system configured for running the Linux Operative System directly from the cd, i believe this follows some different configuration steps than regular kernel compilation+linux install. So i believe what you are trying to achieve is not easily achievable by non-experienced linux users.
Not sure if i'm fully correct but i believe so. Cheers
Thanks for the replies. Yeah I was referring to a Linux Live CD, sorry for the misinterpretation. I am thinking about partitioning my older Windows 98 box and installing a version of Linux on it, that way I could compile my own kernel and just replace the existing one. It sounds like that's what I'm going to do, but now my question is, which version of Linux would make this the easiest, but also would be a decent one(so in a sense I'm just asking which Linux you prefer). I know MSN Messenger is written by Microsoft so I'm thinking the chances are slim that wine can run it on Linux, but is that possible? I could just use the web MSN if that's not possible so that isn't a big issue. Thanks again.
First of all, don't care about the MSN. You will have kopote, gaim, amsn instead of it.
You can see the http://distrowatch.com/ for detailed information about different distros.
And if te only thing that you want to do is compiling the kernel, just install a distro and get the latest version of the kernel from kernel.org. Then compile it for your system. No need to compile it on aother platform....
> ...so I don't have to partition one of my drives to install Linux...
You have already had Knoppix which is a LiveCD!
Well will those IM programs be able to use my MSN account and talk to my buddies? That's the only reason I want to be able to use MSN. I've decided if I can be able to talk to my MSN buddies than I want to partition the drive and take crappy Windows 98 off this laptop and put a decent Linux on it. Thanks for the link so I can check out info about the different distros. Compiling the kernel isn't the ONLY thing I'm interested in, I want to do some regular C++ but all Linux distros have a compiler so no worries there. The kernel thing is just a special thing I want to edit and add to so I can have a totally(or near it) custom OS. So my first step in this process is to partition and install a Linux distro? Thanks for the reply.
You can check the web sites fo the IM softwares about detailed information. But, yes, you can use existing MSN, Yahoo, AOL,... accounts with these softwares.
If you want to install a specific (really specific) distro for your laptop, you can try Gentoo Linux.
And this is a programming forum, if the conversation will go in this way, thread may be closed! :/
Well thank you for your reply. This thread did start off being in the correct category and then it crossed over. However, I don't think it will be closed, it would be moved if anything. One last question on the compilation of the kernel. Does the source code come with the installation, or do I have to go and download the source code specific to whichever distro I use? I'm assuming it will compile without error on the Linux-supplied g++(or gcc)? Thanks.
Well, the source code of the kernel is the same for all distros. GNU/Linux is the name of the kernel not the entire system. The entire system is named RedHat Linux, Slackware Linux.... etc
The file size is not very large so I recommend you to download the latest stable version from the www.kernel.org. The version coming with your distro may be an older version.
On most distros you have all the tools to compile a new kernel. You may have a look to google for detailed information. And most of the distros supply enough information for upgrading your kernel in their web sites.
No need to repartition to install Linux. Use VMware. VMware server is free now. Then you can just run Linux in Windows.
Or better, do like I do and run Linux as the primary OS and Windows in VMware. More secure this way.