On Sun, Jun 21, 2020, at 5:31 AM, Raffaele BELARDI wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > > From: james <gar...@verizon.net> > > Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2020 21:36 > > To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org > > Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] old kernel on Gentoo > > > > On 6/17/20 12:52 PM, Raffaele BELARDI wrote: > > > Hello, > > > > > > I might need to build and run an old 3.x kernel on a Desktop PC for > > > some very specific tests. Would Gentoo be a good solution? > > > > > > I see that currently gentoo-sources only includes 4.x and 5.x sources. > > > > > > Thanks, > > > > > > raffaele > > > > > > > I use a 3.18.40 kernel, currently, on one of my AMD systems. It has > > thousands of source build packages, not only from portage but many others. > > > > What about the rest of the system, in particular GCC and the C > libraries? Do you manage to build the 3.x kernel with up to date system > or do you need to ''freeze'' some packages? >
If you don't care about age of the userland most tools are actually very backwards compatible and should work on a 3.x kernel. You will need to try it, but I expect the modern @system set of packages would work just fine. If you do need an old userland what I might try to do is grab an old Debian/Ubuntu CD. You could then use Portage Prefix to build the older tools you need with a more contemporary userland. Again, the bigger issue will be old releases falling out of tree.
