# CONFIG_NETFILTER is not set


Big mistake! You have no firewall without that.

what is a normal size for a 'standard' home system anyways? My kernel is 1,4 mb which is big I guess. But whould I really notice a speed difference if I recompiled it and left out useless stuff (standard kernel, just recompiled with right processor, no clue if it mathers, and added XFS support since my debian box is on xfs and I want to be able to read it)? At boot it hangs a few seconds on some bluetooth stuff, that could be left out. But I hardly ever reboot, system is always on. So what's the gain in making it smaller? (except for the fun in recompiling)

A smaller kernel will give better performance unde any circumstance, not just cut down your boot-up time. I dare say though, that if your machine will compile a kernel in 10 seconds, then this is no issue at all.
All you really have to have compiled in to the kernel are the devices necessary for the system to boot, plus any other features you need that are not available as a module.
When you run make menuconfig or make xconfig, the items that can be set to 'M' are available as modules. Set the ones that you may need to 'M' and leave the rest out.
You should be able to get a kernel of around 1MB or 1.1MB. I think if it gets to 1.2 it will already complain of being too large.
If you like to play around or are unsure of the exact options you need then leave most stuff marked as 'M', then play around with /etc/rc.d/rc.modules disabling modprobe for things you don't need.
You can also speed up boot process by editing /etc/inetd.conf, turning off services such as telnet,comsat,etc.

powadha
I used to try to keep my kernels below 800K but my latest 2.4.23 is 1.06M and my 2.6.0-test11 is 1.32M.

There is a reason for trying to keep a kernel as small as possible. Basically it's like most other things, the more stuff you add to it the more chance there is that something will go wrong.

But if your kernel is working then I wouldn't worry about it. The main goal is building a kernel that works and is optimised for your system.