Most people I've talked to who run Linux have little problem with the generic kernel that is installed on a system when you do the initial install. I have many times tried to compile my own kernel, sometimes it worked, most times it gave me errors of some nature. I have installed and reinstalled Linux many times and can't seem to understand why you still have to deal with the generic kernel.
The idea I have might be a little more time consuming, but it should help improve performance in the end, and make the time spent worth it. When you install, your system is scanned up and down, and a general idea of your system if presented to you on subsequent screens. I'm using openSuSE 11 as an example. On the computers I've installed openSuSE 11 on, it figured out my system pretty well and most everything, except the broadcom network drivers, are installed and work well. After installing openSuSE, I decided to try and compile my kernel to see if I can tweak things a bit and I noticed that a lot, not all, but a lot of the options selected are set as generic items, or items as modules that I don't have and more than likely never will. Looking a bit more into it, I see the specific hardware that fits my system and I select it. Now, I'm not a kernel author, or even a programmer for that matter, but I would think if the module you select is specific to your hardware, it would allow your hardware to run better, right?
So this is my idea... While you install your system and answer the questions about your hardware, why not have that information integrated into a config file and toward the end of the installation, after some nice online updates and all, have the kernel configuration option appear and ask if you want to compile some hardware specific options for your system to help improve performance. Even if it does not fully compile the kernel, it could update modules and dependencies to better match your running system. Have the configuration dialog come up and suggest that the options that are selected best fit your hardware, and suggest looking over it and check for any other options you might want to add or remove. How many personal computers or laptops have iSCSI of FDDI built in? All the options that are selected when you first run the make xconfig or whatever, how many of them are kept on a typical home users system? I believe that doing this will also give users more of a reason to read more about the internals of Linux, *gasp* maybe people will actually want to RTFM, and in turn helping the community. Who was it that said "and knowing is half the battle!"?
Simply put,.. Install, Update, Compile, Finalize, Reboot, be happy with a semi or fully customized kernel compiled by you for you.
