If you have decided to re-compile your kernel it essentially means that either the current kernel configuration does not fulfill your needs or your are upgrading to the latest kernel.I needed to upgrade my 2.4 to 2.6 for working with my Bluetooth dongle.

Since my College days, when I was introduced to Unixes, I love to have my own compiled kernel. It gave me that special feeling of "my machine is better than yours". Besides, a custom kernel serves as an interesting conversation topic with geeks. Just ask them "What is your kernel size ?".

The Openwall Project provides security related kernel patches for Linux and BSD kernels. I read about this in Hardening Linux by James Turnbull. The patch that most interested me was to prevent executable code from running in the stack. That won't prevent all buffer overflow attacks, but it can stop some of them. I really don't understand why this isn't just the default nowadays - I know it can break some programs and debuggers, but it seems smart to me.

Many of the kernel newbies are not aware of certain important concepts which are essential for proper compilation and insertion of the modules into the kernel This HOWTO is all about kernel compilation, how to avoid the annoying 'unresolved symbols' errors while Insmoding the modules.