I figured it was high time I updated my desktop machine to a modern kernel. And, as usual there were some hiccoughs, but it seemed to go reasonably well with the following procedure:

cd /usr/src

tar xjfv linux.[version].tar.bz2

rm linux (assuming it is a link to your old kernel)

ln -s /usr/src/linux.[version] linux

cd /usr/src/linux

cp /usr/src/[oldkernel-source-directory]/.config .config

make oldconfig

make menuconfig

cd /usr/src/linux

make-kpkg clean

make-kpkg --append-to-version=.[a_unique_and_clever_name] kernel_image modules_image

cd /usr/src

dpkg -i kernel-image-[version].[a_unique_and_clever_name]_10.00.Custom386.deb

vi /etc/lilo.conf

lilo

What gave me troubles was using ALSA instead of OSS as the sound architecture. It worked, after following instructions to install a few things, if I was root. I don’t always want to be root though, and nothing I tried seemed to work. Finally, I used the brute force approach. I went into /dev and went to town, chmoding everything in sight, including mixer, sequencer, dsp, music and the snd directory, as well as the entire contents of /dev/snd. It works now though, so that’s something.