A lot of the extra features in the kernel are there to allow for easier debugging when doing kernel development. They typically add extra load to deal with and slow down the system, overall. (It's minimal, but it's still a performance hit). In the two you listed, Kprobes is just such a feature. It helps with debugging, so if you're a user who isn't doing kernel development, you don't need it and probably wouldn't know what it was. cgroups... I don't know that there's any benefit to having cgroups unless you know how to use them. On their own, I believe their only use is if you have applications that hook into them to limit resource usage. So, I imagine if you don't know what cgroups are, you really don't need them. (And, again, they include a tiny performance hit) So, to answer your question, the features that have that listed seem like they're more for power users or kernel developers, so to make sure you get the most performance out of your custom rolled kernel, you shouldn't include them unless you need them. That's my take at least. -Andrew On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 10:14 AM, <rhubarbpieguy at gmail.com> wrote: > > Several kernel options are marked to install as default, yet the help > instructs "If unsure, say N." or the equivalent. This isn't a big deal and > I'm certainly not losing sleep over it, but it seems contradictory. Does > it make sense? If so, what's the logic? > > Two examples from linux-3.8.1 General setup: > > General setup/Control Group support ---> - Say N is unsure. > General setup/Kprobes - If in doubt, say "N". > ______________________________**_________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/**mailman/listinfo/tclug-list<http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20130320/7c7f63e4/attachment-0001.html>