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Kernel Configuration Features

  • Loadable Module Support: Allows daemons like a webserver to load modules as they are needed.
  • Processor Type and Features: Support for a particular system like selecting the processor type and the amount of memory system supports.
  • General Setup: Networking, PCI BIOS support, Power management, ELF support, and a.out binaries.
  • Block Devices: Lists entries that enable support for IDE, floppy drive, parallel port devices, RAM disk support, and loopback devices for mounting CD-ROM image files.
  • Multi-Device Support (RAID) and LVM (Device Drivers): Enable the use of RAID devices, by choosing the RAID support level, enable Logical Volume Management (LVM) to combine partitions into logical volumes managed dynamically.
  • Networking Options: It supports device drivers, networking support & capabilities to operate as a gateway, firewall, or router, and networking devices, including Ethernet, token ring, AppleTalk devices, and WAN interface.
    These options are enabled:
    * TCP/IP – for Internet networking
    * Network Packet Filtering – to support for an IPtables firewall
    * AppleTalk- for NetTalk and to connect to the Machintosh system on the network
  • ATA/IDE/MFM/RLL Device Drivers Support: To select the support for IDE ATA hard drives and ATAPI CD-ROMs.
  • SCSI Support Device Drivers: It supports SCSI disk, SCSI Low-Level Drivers, tape drives, and CD-ROMs.
  • Multimedia Device Drivers to support various multimedia cards like Video4Linux
  • Bluetooth Device Drivers: It supports Bluetooth enabled peripherals, listing drivers for USB serial and PC card interfaces.
  • Sound Device Drivers: Kernel 2.6 and later supports different sound cards via Advanced Linux Linux Architecture.
  • Character Device Drivers: Lists features for devices like keyboard, mouse, and serial ports.
  • File Systems: It includes DOS, VFAT, NTFS, CDROM's file systems like ISE & UDF, Network file systems like NFS, SMB (Samba), NCP (Netware) and HFS (Macintosh).
  • Kernel Hacking: For developer's interest who works on kernel-level. They need to modify kernel-code for debugging or provide a measure of control during crashes.

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