it is very easy to rebuild your own from the exact kernel version that you downloaded from the same sources. The kernel build process allows you to tailor your build compiler to exactly the processor and hardware you have. (of course, there's some assembly in there, I'm not sure how much of it is #ifdef'ed for tuning)
In the first years of linux, this is what you did, it's the way it worked more or less by default with the Slackware, the first popular "distro". RedHat and Debian came out, and they started to streamlined away from it, but it's still easy to do in those systems. I don't use debian much, but with RH/fedora you download the source rpm and use rpmbuild to unpack and build, then you can go poke around
I say it's easy, it is, but it is a bit ... not fussy, but detailed, very detailed. You answer many questions most of which you'd need to do a little research for, but you can explore the ones you want and accept defaults for the rest.
caveat: i have not done this in a half dozen years, hope it still works
In the first years of linux, this is what you did, it's the way it worked more or less by default with the Slackware, the first popular "distro". RedHat and Debian came out, and they started to streamlined away from it, but it's still easy to do in those systems. I don't use debian much, but with RH/fedora you download the source rpm and use rpmbuild to unpack and build, then you can go poke around
I say it's easy, it is, but it is a bit ... not fussy, but detailed, very detailed. You answer many questions most of which you'd need to do a little research for, but you can explore the ones you want and accept defaults for the rest.
caveat: i have not done this in a half dozen years, hope it still works