Six Easy Steps to Compiling and Installing Linux Kernel

Compiling Linux Kernel is used for making your system as very customizable one . User can change kernel modules and device drivers based on their need . Suppose if i want to disable wireless support in my desktop PC [because wifi card is not available in my system] . i can recompile and disable that option in my existing kernel. In this article , the kernel compilation has been described in Six Easy Steps

1. Download the latest version of kernel from

http://kernel.org

The Latest kernel at the time of writing this  documentation

linux-2.6.32.3.tar.gz

or

linux-2.6.32.3.tar.gz

2. Unzip or Extract the archive file [Need Root Privileges ]

# su

# tar -xzvf linux-2.6.32.3.tar.gz -C /usr/src

or

# tar -xjvf linux-2.6.32.3.tar.bz2 -C /usr/src

3. Configure Modules and Drivers [Enable or Disable Drivers Here]

# make menuconfig   (for text mode)

or

# make xconfig      (for xwindow)

or

# make gconfig      (for GNOME – Recommended)

5. Compile Kernel [make command will take min 15 minutes to compile the kernel ]

# make

# make modules

# make modules_install

6. Install Kernel

# make install

Thats it. Now You can use new kernel in your favorite Linux flavors .