I have a really old notebook 486sx with 8 MB ram, and am
recompiling a new kernel.  It has been about 6 hours, with
no end in sight.  I did the same with version 1.3.3 yesterday
and it completed in about 2 hours!

In in single user mode now, with 

mount -a
swapon -a

done manually.  With 1.3.3 I was in multiuser mode.

Is there a huge difference in the kernel sizes, amount of
kernel code, the swapping efficiency, or what, between 1.3.3
and 1.4?

Size of swap partition for 1.4 is 28 MB.  Don't recall
what it was for 1.3.3.

Comments?