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this should be an adequate howto for kernel compilation: http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/Kernel-Build-HOWTO.html hope this helps :) bye, vitaminx

>I have no idea of what a kernel is, and from reading posts on Slashdot I know it's something I >houldn't try touching with a ten foot pole.

I don't have a computer science degree, but the way I think of it is of the kernel as the primary co-ordinator of the operating system; the "brain" if you will. It is also what is responsible for the loading of drivers that talk to the hardware, so it's very important.

As for not touching it, the kernel is not the bogeyman people seem to like making it out to be. It's complex, yes, because it more or less has to be...but choosing which hardware you want included for support in it and which you don't is a fairly straightforward process...or at least I've always found it to be. This could be enormously beneficial to you.

Shameless plug:

http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/ray_tracing

The link is to a presentation I gave to my LUG on Linux Ray Tracing. It's very basic, but (hopefully) is a good start.

Not libre, but also check out MuPAD. I use it quite often in addition to Octave when I tutor. MuPad and Octave do 100% of the mathematics required for Calc 1-3 and with some work, did everything I needed for other analysis courses. I can't speak to Matlab since I'm not a user, but the free alternatives, at least on the beginning calculus levels, are as easy to use as Mathematica. The graphical output is not as refined, but with Gnuplot and some (shameless plug) resourcefullness can do much of the same things... (well, if you speak TeX :D ).

It would be nice to see some componentization of the kernel to allow for easy stripping of unnecessary features,

Umm.. ever heard of kernel modules and the plethora of kernel configuration options and methods? I honestly cannot see how you could get even more 'componentized'

No, you'll not be able to non-destructively resize if you don't defrag. I did this many, many times during preparation for some
installation notes and even with a large chunk of free space at the end, a non-defragged disk meant a wiped partition.

I started a page here. I'm preparing a section on shaders and animation that should be ready in a couple weeks.

This is pretty good news for me. I started a tutorial for blender a while back. The interface at first looks daunting, but after using it for a few hours you realize that everything makes a lot of sense. It's probably as opposite as you can get to something like Bryce in terms of the interface. Not pretty, but powerful. Though there are many rt apps for Linux, none of the friendliest ones are open.

This sucks. I've been in the process of creating a tutorial on blender here. Blender was featured because it was a relatively powerful package and did many things that much higher priced packages did.
Many people complained about the interface, but once you learned the shortcuts it was probably one of the easiest to use. Someone had even created a python based blender to POVray script that allowed you to model in blender and render in POV, so shortcomings in the Blender rendering engine were quickly made moot.
It is not the only package available for rendering, but it was one of the best for animations. Funny that this occurred a day after I saw the QuickTime preview on the Apple site.

This thread's funny.

I put together a kernel rebuild guide a few years ago ( Kernel Rebuild Guide ). I'd guess that for perhaps 95% of Linux users, there's absolutely no need to rebuild a kernel. For those that do, it's usually to enable a feature or to tweak just an iota more performance from the system.

Sure, anything that makes the system easier to use is good. It would be wonderful if guides such as mine were obviated. At the same time, should we really be wasting time on what's essentially a band-aid? By this I don't mean that Aunt Tillie shouldn't re-compile her kernel, only that if Aunt Tillie (a regular user) requires the feature then the distribution should already support it through other tools.

The main problem I see is that no matter the frontend, a kernel recompile will invariably ask a lot of questions that Aunt Tillie may be unprepared to answer. And if she can answer them I strongly believe that she would have absolutely no problem with the current configuration tools such as xconfig/menuconfig.

Do you remember the scene in "Crossroads" where the kid is trying to buy a guitar? He chooses a beat-up old model instead of a newer, fancier model because he feels that it somehow legitimizes the music. I see the same thing happening today -- a few of my acquaintances insist on using old, near-obsolete equipment because they feel that the art is somehow "better" if done on a shoestring budget...

As you said, POVRay can run on a 386. For anything but thumbnails, however, be prepared to wait hours or days for a render. Forget about doing any animation. On a 1.2GhZ Athlon, some of my simplest animations can take a day to complete. Sure, I have a stable of older machines, and I do occasionally "distribute" the processing over several machines, but it's much more efficient to have a fast single machine than mess with clustering.

Some notes I put together are
here .

My "distributed" clustering is actually editing the pov .ini file so that each machine does a portion of the render. I've gotten their relative speeds accurate enough that when my script pushes them out to each box, they all finish at about the same time.

No major issues. Look in the usr/src/linux/Documentation folder for required versions. Also, check out my rebuild guide:

http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/kernel.html.

This is what I see in Florida:

We can fund multi-million dollar racetracks, baseball, football, and basketball stadiums, road developments to nowhere, and flights for city planners to Europe but cannot spend a tenth of that on education. In S. Florida, the school board recently purchased what amounted to swamp land for millions more than what it was worth. The promises that lottery fundings would not *replace* former school dollars was broken, as millions that once went to schools now pays for special interests. The Miami-Dade Superintendent of schools is in hot water; most believe it's a political ousting.

My point is that it's not necessarily about more taxes, but more oversight on where the money goes. Miami is very much "I scratch your back, you scratch mine."

But this thread strikes very close.

As a former mathematics tutor (calc, stats, etc) I was shocked at how students who could not add or subtract had made it out of high school. I'm not exaggerating in the least. I tutored several who could not subtract decimals or multiply fractions. They had difficulty with geometry and simple arithmetic.

My elementary school teacher did not know how to add fractions. If not for my parents being somewhat mathematical, I wouldn't have even attempted the calculus. Without calculus, there is no physics.

Anyway, I started a page to help students using tools such as mupad, octave and gnuplot. I gave a presentation on these tools for a local linux group last year and have been asked to do another. If you know students who are on the verge of giving up, have them try one of these packages. It may help with their understanding. My fledgling website is at:

www.digitalhermit.com.