·What are the Patch files for (as opposed to the .zimage files)? (Entry last updated on March 8th, 2002)
A .patch file is a description of the differences between two other files or tree of files, typically two different
versions of program source code. By applying the .patch file, using the patch program,
against one version you can generate the other version. Since the .patch file generally is much
smaller than the full source code, it is much more efficient to distribute .patch files when a
change to the source is made than to redistribute the entire source.
You only need the .patch files if you intend to compile your own kernel. In that case you also need
the original kernel source code to start from. It's available in the linux-v2.00b11.tar.bz2 file at the
Hijack web site (exact name may change, but it'll be on the format linux-v.tar.bz2).
.bz2 is a compression format that gives even higher compression than .zip or .gz. The tools
(bzip2/bunzip2) are normally included in Linux distributions and are available for Windows here from the Redhat source site or included in the Cygwin tool kit.