Build your kernel faster

Normally when building custom kernels for our laptops or desktops, we tend to make use of the kernel config file used by the particular distro. However the distro config files tend to be huge, having loads of modules turned on, ven those which might not even be needed on our particular laptop or desktop. This is the case since the distro kernels need to cater to a large configurations of systems. . This leads to the kernel taking ages to compile ! If you want to build your kernel fast, and turn off all those modules/drivers which are not needed on your system, streamline_config.pl script by Steven Rostedt is what you need (at the sametime ensuring that your kernel does have all that is necessary). Here is the thread where Steven explains how this script can be used. In brief,

Run the script with the arguement being your architecture's Kconfig file and save the output

• # ./streamline_config.pl arch/x86/Kconfig > config_stream

Copy config_stream as your new .config and run 'make oldconfig' or 'make menuconfig' if you want to continue configuring the kernel. Your build would now take much lesser time !

Note: If you already have a .config file that has some of your custom config options set and you want to streamline that, no worries as streamline_config.pl will work on that .config itself (provided its present in the kernel src dir). You might still want to take a backup of your .config [;-)]