Yeah, you can. In fact, if you really want to be up to speed, you should get a copy of the 2.4.x kernel tree. As far as I can work out, there are two main ways of upgrading your kernel. You can
patch it (it sounds like this is what you're doing), or you can grab the whole of a new kernel tree and compile from scratch. If you go to
www.kernel.org and follow the links there you should be able to get the latest kernel. There's a HOW-TO
here.
