There aren't any kernel "tweaks" which are actually required to run Debian... I've updated my kernel via kernel.org about two dozen times in the last year or so (I started following the development series around 2.1.120), and Debian has never had any problems relating to that.
What happens with the debianized kernel-source packages is that various patches are already applied, generally to add support for such things as additional hardware. As an example, some of the recent source packages have contained an updated version of the aic7xxx scsi driver, and I believe that FAT32 support was included prior to making it into the official kernel tree. > > But Debian kernel-source packages are tweaked for Debian. This means > > that since it is not THE Linux kernel source, it probably won't be > > OH? I wonder if you could mention what _tweaks_ are required for > debian? I have been just getting the kernel from kernel.org and > making my own. I was under the impression that the kernels were > just Linux, not debian-Linux. > > Oh, do you mean tweaks to just package it? That I understand but not > really tweaks to the kernel, right?