Applying patch(es) to a kernel

You would download the patches you need into your home directory.
Open a terminal and type su to become root.
Type cd /usr/src/kernel-? or /usr/src/linux-? (depending on the kernel's folder name and ? needs to be the version number).
Type patch -p1 < /path/to/kernel/patch (path to kernel patch is the full path to where you downloaded the patch to, ex. /home/donna/patch.diff, the patch.diff is what you would replace with the correct name of the patch). You would run the patch command for all patches you want to add to the kernel.
For those that want to install the 2.6.10 kernel, in order to have bootsplash support, so that you can see the pretty background picture during the kernel boot up screen (not to be confused with the grub boot menu where you choose the kernel you want to boot), then you would need to download and install the bootsplash from here
If you have a Nvidia video card, then you may need to add Nvidia patches to the 2.6.9 and 2.6.10 kernels, because some Nvidia users have reported problems trying to use these kernel versions.