OK, my answer was hasty about Mandrake 9 and I stand corrected on the gcc C++ ABI issue (but it doesn't make me any happier about it).
I used to build my own kernels in an attempt to make things run faster on whatever old machine I was using Linux on. Since there are now real, live Linux companies that are now doing real, live quality assurance on their products, I now only use the kernel that comes with the distribution and its follow-on patches. There are many and severe good reasons for this: 1) Someone can be blamed for problems, to put it quite bluntly. This is key in any organization and ours is no exception. It is also no accident that certain parts of Linux (ie, threads) have improved so incredibly well between Red Hat 7.2, 7.3, and 8.0, and that's all I'm going to say about that, also the fact that Apache 2 is multithreaded may have brought this issue to the forefront sooner than later. 2) People who are working for these Linux companies and getting paid real money to make real livings are spending thousands of man-hours watching it, poking it, probing it, pulling wires out to see if it breaks, trying new stuff out, writing code for it, and after that's all done they're dropping it off a rooftop to make sure it survives the landing. This is seriously important and makes point (1) so effective. 3) All these people who are getting paid real money to do real jobs are also eating their own dog food (they use their own products). They like their product and are improving it. In my view, "improving" a product is absolutely not the same thing as downloading and installing the latest version of everything you redistribute--you test/use/improve those things and contribute your improvements back to the community. So, essentially, when we say "Hey it works great with Red Hat 8.0" it means that, well, hey, it works great with Red Hat 8.0. It does not mean "hey, it works great with this or that kernel and as long as this kernel is installed you're okay" because there are so many other parts of the system that need to be regression tested and we are confident and it has been demonstrated to us that is what Red Hat (or any big Linux distribution company) does. OK, enjoy, Kris
