I apologize of this question has been answered before, but I have not found a reply that exactly answers my question. I have some patches I would like to apply to my kernel. If I download the applicable kernel for my computer, apply /proc/config.gz to it, and apply my patches, will this generated kernel be exactly the same as the distro kernel, excluding my patches? Or does openSuSE add some distro-specific patches? Thank you.
If you download the kernel from The Linux Kernel Archives,
you will be getting a vanilla kernel. If you download
it from the opensuse repository using yast, you will
get a kernel with distro-specific patches. With the
exception of Slackware, most distros provide you a custom patched kernel.
/proc/config.gz is the config info for the kernel you are
logged into. You need to run make oldconfig on your
downloaded kernel to bring .config up to date and
apply your patches.