How to go a bit more far with your gNewSense Metad
You enter in a testing zone
gNewSense metad - Free as in freedom
Compile the last free kernel from source, and Free Your Gnu.
How To upgrade kernel on a metad from source :
Go to last free kernel release
http://www.linux-libre.fsfla.org/pub/linux-libre/releases/
Download the last release.
In a terminal : For example, for Linux-libre 2.6.** you would enter
cd /usr/src/
wget http://www.fsfla.org/~lxoliva/fsfla/linux-libre/releases/2.6.**-libre/linux-2.6.**-libre.tar.bz2
Uncompress the archive file
tar xvjf linux-2.6.**-libre.tar.bz2
Go to the newly created directory of the uncompressed source
cd linux-2.6.**
Enter
We will see now how upgrade well your kernel This part is important and long (depending on the computers you have got) you have to edit a file in the kernel source before compiling
Edit on > linux2.6.**/Documentation/lguest/Makefile all: lguest to all:
Now you can start the compilation of the last free kernel
make clean mrproper
Now, you will need to have a base .config file that will control the build process. If you don't have a specific .config file, you can use the default file in the /boot directory. Just copy that into the source directory.
cp /boot/config-`uname -r` ./.config
Now, you can review and change config variables. First, update your config file to the new options of the kernel source
make oldconfig
and answer the configuration questions there. Enter yes for the module to be built into the kernel, m for it to be build modularly which will only load if needed and no to exclude the module. You can also enter ? to get information about the module. However, you don't have to worry too much as you will be able to revise your decisions in the next step.
Next, enter
make xconfig
(make menuconfig is an alternative .config editing tool)
This will open an application that classifies and explains the properties and available modules you can either 'build into' the kernel, make modularly available or disable. When you are done, save it and exit.
Now, you can build your kernel. First enter
make-kpkg clean
As the final command, enter
fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd --append-to-version=-metad kernel_image kernel_headers kernel_source
You can change metad by what you want value with anything as long it starts with - (minus sign) and has no whitespace in between. Optionally, you can add kernel_source at the end, if you want to build a source pack. You can also put CONCURRENCY_LEVEL=N (where N should be replaced by the number of CPU cores your computer has) at the beginning of the command to make the building process take advantage of multiple core systems.
The last command will take some time to complete. At the end, you will have linux-image and linux-headers (and linux-source if you chose) installation files.
go to linux-image and linux-headers files to the directory you want. Then, either go to that directory in terminal with cd command and install the two .deb packages:
dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.**-metad.deb dpkg -i linux-headers-2.6.**-metad.deb
Or, just double-click on the two files and click on the Install Package button.
Restart and choose metad kernel from your GRUB.
At this step you are now running on what we can call the gNewSense metad