I see no point in spending compile time and hard drive space on modules which I don't need. I therefore usually only put into the kernel what I need. I also prefer to compile things directly into the kernel, so only if I have to pass some extra parameters to a module when it is loaded, I compile things as modules. If I need something extra, because I bought a new piece of hardware, I usually reconfigure and recompile the kernel. This is why my kernel configuration compiles fast and the resulting image and number of modules is very small. Here I will explain a few choices I made.
At Processor family I chose , since that is what my Armada has for a CPU. There are Armadas with a Pentium II, so if you have one of those, change this.
For Power management I use ACPI. The Armada also works with APM, but ACPI is newer and better. Most options here are functionality. I selected everything useful here. The rest is model specific and therefore not of interest.
CPU Frequency scaling allows you to conserve power by throttling back the CPU. You get a few power schemes for general behaviour but you can also manually select a speed in percents. Both KDE and Gnome have applets to control this.
In here we need under to drive the PCMCIA slots.
The Armada E500 has PCI hotplug, but I didn't figure out whether that is supported under Linux. I selected in case I want to get into that someday.
As mentioned in the section called “Current status” I'm not really interested in infrared, but perhaps some rainy sunday afternoon I will, so I selected a few options that made sense at first sight from IrDA.
Under I selected everything needed for Bluetooth communication and control. The Armada E500 has no built-in Bluetooth hardware, but using a cheap USB Bluetooth dongle this functionality can be easily added. It is way more convenient and functional than infrared.
In here I just selected everything that my Armada has and their dependencies, and nothing else.
-> for the parallel port at the back.
Under there is for the floppy (which I almost never use actually since I have a battery there) and to mount files (like DVD or CD ISOs) without having to burn them onto some physical media.
is needed for driving IDE devices (hard drive, DVD, etc.)
is needed for USB mass storage. Don't dismiss this because the hard drive is IDE.
The built-in network port is supported by EtherExpressPro/100 (eepro100), which can be found under ->->.
Although I use Ndiswrapper and Windows drivers for my WLAN card, I also selected -> to enable the Wireless extensions, iwconfig access and create proc/net/wireless.
Under input device support I selected , which can be found under ->. I also selected-> to be able to use the PS/2 port in the back for a mouse.
I don't like the PC Speaker, so I didn't select it. If you want it, you can find it under .
Hardware Monitoring is supported by the Armada and is selected by the option with that name.
Under we need and to get graphics. Under I also selected to get graphics on the console.
Under I selected . I use ALSA because its better than OSS and the latter is deprecated. The driver for the Armada's ESS Maestro 2E sound card is called and is found under .
Under I selected what I needed. No dedicated drivers for the Armada's USB port are necessary.
Under , you'll find . I included it because with a laptop you never know what kind of a printer you'll have to use.
is also there and used by multimedia applications like MPlayer and Rosegarden. The documentation says to mknod dev/rtc, but I found that on my system it was already there, no doubt created by udev.
Also in this section there is . My Armada's graphics board is using a shared PCI/AGP connection. Including AGP support will use that connection and speeding up graphics.
Under Serial Drivers there is , which will give you support for the serial port at the back.
I am a ReiserFS user, but you might be different. Compile support for the file system of your root and boot partitions into the kernel.
Under and I selected what I suspected to be needing.
Under there are a few options which are needed by the system.
offers support for SMB (Windows shares etc.) and CIFS file systems, which can come in handy because a laptop may find itself in environments which weren't originally expected, and it won't do much for Linux advocacy if you have to recompile your kernel to use a printer somewhere.
Native language support is not something Crux is meant for. The Crux community usually does everything in American English, which was good enough for its swedish creator. I did include support for the Euro sign.