The typical target system for using this approach is a small embedded Linux system. The goal here is to begin with a proven – a known, tested, and working – kernel configuration for our embedded Linux project. Well, how exactly can we achieve this?
Interestingly, the kernel code base itself provides known, tested, and working kernel configuration files for various hardware platforms. We merely have to select the one that matches (or is the nearest match to) our embedded target board. These kernel config files are present within the kernel source tree in the arch/<arch>/configs/ directory. The config files are in the format <platform-name>_defconfig. A quick peek is in order; see the following screenshot showing the command ls arch/arm/configs being performed on the v5.4 Linux kernel code base:
Thus, for example...