So the new machine is plenty fast, but not yet up to snuff.

I managed to get a working kernel on my fourth compile. The first three would have been ok but for my disabling initrd support and compiling in support for every filesystem except the one I needed to boot (nested kernel options and the outermost one I had left as M). Grub concealed the true problem through trying to pass UUIDs to the kernel for the root device, which it didn’t understand. This is first time I have used grub, and I don’t see the advantage over lilo.

X is a pain. I am using the VESA driver as the intel driver doesn’t work yet for my G45 chipset. Or perhaps it works but requires a compile of the latest git tree of the entire X server. Modular X it aint. I am getting some weird failures on starting X, that appear to be interactions with the X server. You can’t push it too quickly.

The processor fan is another oddity. I have good sensor data from the two cores of my microprocessor, and they never get up to body temperature, but the fan will surge up to full speed ever now and again for no apparent reason. I think this may be a kernel bug, but am not too sure.