Linux Novice

[John Rowan]

I wanted to see what all the fuss was about so I went out and purchased Redhat Linux v 5.2 and installed it on a generic 90Mhz Pentium.  It was okay.  I came across a deal at www.compgeeks.com for a dual PentiumPro bare bones system on an Intel PR440FX system board.  I went for 128MB RAM and a 10,000 Seagate Cheetah to round out this system.  Initially I installed Microsoft Windows2000 server but it was so slow it was rediculous.  Windows98 ran much quicker but only utilized one of the processors.  I wanted to see how Linux SMP would perform on the same platform so I fdisked the drive and ran the install.  Windows2000 took over 100 minutes to install (and that was after having to install Windows98). Linux installed in about 12 minutes!  On the PentiumPro with one processor it's much quicker than the 90Mhz Pentium (the 10,000 RPM Cheetah probably helps here too).    Long story short, I'm a novice with Linux.  I've gone through the manual several times but can't find out how to recompile the kernel to take advantage of the second processor.    Would someone be kind enough to either forward me instructions or  point me to a readme to take the next step?