How to install and compile a linux kernel
 

hello everybody I'm trying to download linux onto my laptop and I'm trying to see what would be a good linux version and how to exectly to compile a linux kernel.

Have you used Linux before? If you haven't then compiling a kernel could be a very daunting task. Most users don't need to compile/recompile a kernel since the ones provided by the distribution work well in most circumstances.

How ... compile a linux kernel
 

Yes, I would agree with reddaz ... you should only jump into building kernels once you are a little more experienced with Linux.
You should have a good grasp of how hardware is presented in Linux as you could easily build a kernel that fails to drive your hardware correctly.

The generic kernels in most distros have almost everything enabled.
Customizing kernels are for those that want to decrease the size of the kernel image or require special configuration for particular hardware.

installing a kernel
 

Thank you guys for your input. I'm going to install the fedora core and this is for a class so the teacher is having us compile a kernel with least amount of modules and I'm trying to figure out how to do that because i have never installed a linux system before. I have worked with linux but never installed one before.

When I compiled my first kernel, I used this guide. This guide is also very good.