Hi,
First, core of Linux system is spelled "kernel" not but curnel.
I will answer the second question.
You can see the version of your kernel by the command:
uname -a
It prints like
Linux windy 2.4.9-34 #1 Sat Jun 1 06:25:16 EDT 2002 i686 unknown
In this line, 2.4.9 is the kernel version number and -34 may be RedHat
RPM build number.
But simply downloading and make, make installing new kernel source may
not work for you. You will need to configure the kernel before
compiling it and to set boot loader configuration correctly.
I've not ever installed the kernel source code to RedHat system myself yet.
Also you will need to understand that you are breaking consistency of
the packaging system of RedHat.
I recommend you to use the latest RedHat package (RedHat Linux 7.3) and
use up2date program to catch up the newest updates.
RedHat 7.3 contains kernel 2.4.18, It is the latest released version
of stable branch.
If you use up2date, you will need to register yourself and the machine
account to RedHat Network with rhn_register command, and configure the
up2date system with up2date-config. If you want to update your kernel,
it is also needed to clear the 'skip list' because kernel packages are
skipped by default.
Best regards.
--
Koichi Inoue, ARGV
E-Mail: inoue@argv.org