I'm interested in compiling a 3.3.1 kernel to work on my Debian machine, to replace my current 2.6.32-5-amd64 kernel.

So far, I've:\
downloaded the archive,
unzipped it,
ran make,
make modules,
make install,
make modules_install
makeinitramfs /boot/initrd.img-3.3.1 3.3.1
sudo update-grub

After restarting, I booted into the 3.3.1 kernel. I open up my wicd manager to select a wifi network(part of my reason to upgrade kernels was support for my wifi chipset), and then it starts lagging like crazy.

When I go back to my current 2.6.32 kernel, I noticed the difference between the initrd images. The initrd image for my current kernel is 8.9 MB, while the initrd image for the new 3.3.1 kernel is a whopping 157.4 MB.

I've also checked the /lib/modules/3.3.1/ directory, and it's 1.27 GB, as opposed to like, ~10 MB for /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-amd64.

I used make menuconfig to configure the makefile, and I tried to be as conservative as possible, selecting only drivers that I need etc...

But how in the heck do I have 1.27 GB of modules, and consequently a 157.4 MB initrd image? I think that's the main reason why the 3.3.1 started lagging.

How can I make a reasonably sized initrd image and module directory?

I was playing with the idea of just proceeding like normally, and deleting the modules in lib/modules/3.3.1/ that I didn't need, AND THEN creating an initrd image.

Any ideas?

My 3.2 from Debian is 105 MB and my self compiled 3.3 is also 105 MB in /lib/modules

The initrd.img are 10.2 and 10.6 respectively, so I don;t know why yours is so big? did you do this using debian tools?

You could enable backports and install 3.0.2 from backports

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