I am compiling the kernel, purely as a learning exercise. Its good fun and I get a kick out of this type of thing. I have a few questions regarding kernel compilation.
Can I always compile the latest stable kernel and use it, or does Ubuntu have to be tweaked by developers to use newer kernels ?
When a new kernel has new features, do said new features just magically work or does Ubuntu have to be tweaked by developers to utilise new features.
As a purely academic question, does compiling the kernel on the actual machine running linux, tweaking the config for cpu type and selectively stripping out support for non present hardware, unwanted file systems etc produce performance gains (even if in reality one just would not notice).
Thanks.