In this section a brief introduction on how to retrieve, configure, compile and install the Linuxkernel is given. There is also a run through of how to patch the kernel with the RTLinux kernelpatch. Installing the kernel and configuring the boot-time options is mostly the same on all Linux distributions, like Red Hat, Debian and Slackware (including their derivatives). Here a Red Hatbased distribution is assumed, probably more to come later. This version of the installation manual assumes the Red Hat GNU/Linux distribution during section 3. If you already know how to retrieve the latest kernels and patches you can skip ahead to section 1.5. For a more complete run-through on how to compile and install the standard Linux kernel the Kernel-HOWTO (Ward, 1999), which usually resides in /usr/doc/HOWTO/ , is the recommended source of information.