Even if that were true (and it's not completely true by the way) autotools is not used to build the kernel. You can very much use autotools to build modern soft

Even if that were true (and it's not completely true by the way) autotools is not used to build the kernel. You can very much use autotools to build modern software for older kernels. That's... kind of the point of using something like autotools. Frankly reading this thread I think many people here bark at the wrong tree. If you don't care for portability don't bother with autotools, just write Makefiles. It's much simpler.