Recently I compiled the latest kernel by manually for just fun. so i logged my experience here. I show the step by step to the compilation process. I followed the this reference for compile the kernel. Why Need to compile the Kernel? Some time some software or modules expected that some kernel flags needed to set while compile (build) the kernel. This kind of scenario we need to rebuild the kernel with specified configuration flags are set. When new kernel is released, compile the new kernel and install in our system. But this is not recommend way to install the system. so use our distribution(Ubuntu, red-hat release ) kernel update. Check your Linux kernel version In Linux system use uname -r or cat /proc/version to find the current kernel version Linux Kernel Version here 2.6.35.22 is current system kernel version Step 1 : Download the latest kernel Goto http://kernel.org/ website and get the latest version of the kernel source. i will get 3.3.3