Sometimes you just need a kernel that is newer than the package manager has to offer. For me it was the bug fixes for the driver of the sound card in x61s. Here’s how to do it “the debian way”.

   1  wget http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.23.1.tar.bz2
   2  tar xjvf linux-2.6.23.1.tar.bz2 -C /usr/src
   3  rm /usr/src/linux && ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.6.23.1 /usr/src/linux
   4  cd /usr/src/linux
   5  zcat /proc/config.gz > .config
   6  make xconfig

Now turn on and configure the new features you are looking for in the new kernel, save the configuration and finally quit.

   1  make-kpkg clean
   2  fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd --append-to-version=-custom-13.10.2007 kernel_image kernel_headers
   3  cd ..
   4  sudo dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.23.1-custom-13.10.2007_2.6.23.1-custom-13.10.2007-10.00.Custom_amd64.deb
   5  sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-2.6.23.1-custom-13.10.2007_2.6.23.1-custom-13.10.2007-10.00.Custom_amd64.deb

The—append-to-version parameter appends the given value into the kernel signature, so that it is easily recognized. If you compile a kernel with the exactly same name as a previous kernel you have then you must move away the directory /lib/modules/your-kernel-name-here.