What to do when compiling a kernel takes only five minutes

Jump up and down and giggle with delight, or look sideways at the bash prompt and expect something to break?

I did the latter at first, then the former. I put Crux on the AMD64, just for kicks, cut the kernel way, way down (really to just the bare essentials — not even PCMCIA) and started the clock. Five minutes later, it was done.

And of course, I was convinced it was broken. I thought for sure that there was a problem and that I’d reboot into a busted system, something kernel-panickyish, or maybe just halfway installed. Or a blinking cursor — I love those.

But none of those things was the case. It lit right up and booted to the login in a matter of seconds, fully working and with network, proper console resolution … even the Tux boot logo penguin in the sky. I had to check my watch three times to make sure I hadn’t slipped through a wormhole or something.

I guess that’s what I get for running sub-1Ghz machines for so long. I forgot how fast “fast” is. And this isn’t even close to the fastest ones out there. Still, that compiled quicker than Ubuntu started on the ugly little K6-2 … almost. 😯

Next stop: Setting up a fresh system, with X, etc. We’ll see how that goes. 🙄 I’ll probably be going back to Arch64 soon … but that’s what I was thinking after this machine finished compiling, too.