Booting Process Overview with Linux OS

1. BIOS performs POST.

2.  BIOS selects the boot device, and loads the boosector.

3.  Bootsector loads setup(), decompression routines and the
  compressed kernel image ( arch/i386/boot/bootsect.S )

4.  setup() function. The kernel is uncompressed in protected mode ( arch/386/boot/compressed/{head.S,
  misc.c}

5.  Low-level initialization performed in assembly code.

6.  High-level initialization performed by C code.

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Simple steps to compile or build a linux kernel

Below are the simple steps to compile or build a linux kernel (i have used fedora 10 version 2.6.35

Step1: Copy the kernel source to /usr/src directory
           cp linux-2.6.35.tar.bz2 /usr/src
           cd /usr/src
           tar -xvj linux-2.6.35.tar.bz2
          Now the bz2 file got extracted under /usr/src/linux-2.6.35 directory

Step2: cd /usr/src/linux-2.6.35
Step3: make menuconfig - select the required components/kernel features that would like to compile. the output of this step will be a config file.
Step4: make bzImage
Step5: make modules
Step6: make modules_install
Step7: mkinitrd initrd-2.6.35 2.6.35
Step8: copy the kernal to /boot
          cp arch/x86/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinux-2.6.35
Step9: Edit the boot loader  vi /etc/grub.conf
Step10: Reboot the system

Now you should select the new kernel in the Boot Menu if your kernel is not default one in the grub.conf