Speed Up Kernel Compilation

Sometimes we’re too lazy to compile our own kernel that we’ve downloaded from www.kernel.org. The laziness goes like this: the kernel source code we download is already big (~70MB), plus the agony of waiting for the kernel compilation to finish (~1 hour). That’s really boring. But the positive side is that we can configure it manually according to the computer we’re using. Every time I compile a kernel, I always add the parameter -j <job>. This parameter works to do several tasks (jobs) at once in 1 go. So the compilation process can run faster. You can see for yourself in the manual from make.

-j [jobs], –jobs[=jobs] Specifies the number of jobs (commands) to run simultaneously. If there is more than one -j option, the last one is effective. If the -j option is given without an argument, make will not limit the number of jobs that can run simultaneously.

For its usage, you can add it every time you run the make command. For example make -j2.This means the program will run 2 threads at once to compile the kernel.

Keep in Mind!

You should match the number of jobs to the number of cores on your computer’s processor. If your processor has 2 cores, please set it to j2. If 4 cores, then j4. This is already enough to put a load on your processor, as can be seen from the high CPU Usage.