Motivation We want to boot a existing Arch Linux installation with a custom configured manually compiled Linux kernel. We assume systemd-boot as boot manager. Steps Clone Git repository of Linux kernel Configure and build kernel make localyesconfig make nconfig # adjust stuff make -j$(nproc) Installation IDENT=custom # modules make modules sudo make modules_install # kernel make bzImage cp -v arch/x86/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-${IDENT} # initrd cp /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux.preset /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux-${IDENT}.preset mkinitcpio -p linux-${IDENT} Configure bootloader Reboot sudo systemctl reboot --boot-loader-entry=arch-${IDENT}.