Hi there, I was just thinking about the fact that the answer to many questions that I see on the list (mostly "how do I get sound?") is "recompile your kernel". Also the fact that recompiling the kernel is pretty much recommended in any situation.
It occurred to me that perhaps, after the rest of the installation is finished, it might be possible to ask "Recompiling your kernel is required to enable sound and is recommended in any case in order to tune the performance of your machine. Do you wish to configure and recompile your kernel now?" [default yes]. "What version of the kernel would you like to install? [list of available kernel-source versions]" Then, after [downloading and] installing kernel-source, you would be dropped into a restricted version of "make menuconfig" - I say restricted because many of the options are confusing to a newbie ("if you enable this option and type mknod bananana, you will get a device /dev/ook. You can use ioctl on this file with the SIOCHEDGEHOG parameter to move your computer through lspace and murder your grandfather") and could be hidden behind an "advanced" tab somewhere. Even better, look at the modules that were enabled when the user did their modconf and take all the other modules out of the kernel by default. Also, some of the modules could be defaulted to compiled in, when there are no parameters needed. The installation process could then run an appropriate make-kpkg and dpkg command for you. Of course, this whole sequence should be available again later by running an appropriate command. Thoughts? Stuart.