This is the conclusion of my earlier thread about getting sound working with
a new kernel. No matter what I did, I couldn't get the modules setup for
iptables right when compiling from scratch.

I decided to settle for the Multimedia kernel for my distro (Spring), with
the latest NVidia driver (since there are no dkms packages for that
kernel,) and with USB sound.

To make it the default kernel, I changed all the symlinks in my /boot
directory, but overlooked the one in /usr/src. It booted quite OK, but
into runlevel 3. If I ran startx, I had a working desktop, but logging out
took me back to the text login, as it should. Fixing that last symlink
cured the problem.

What does the symlink actually do? It is one of those things that I could
simply take note of, but I am interested to know why it is needed.

Doug.
--
Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to
you.
- Elbert Hubbard