2.6 vs 2.4 kernals

Greetings, I wonder if we could ask one of the guru's to list the processes and differences in creating kernals etc. across 2.4 and earlier and 2.6 (and hopefully later). such as "make prepare" instead of "make dep" or is there a mini-how-to somewhere? as one who rarely has to, but does work on various systems with different kernals I would like to have a "cheat-sheet" but don't believe i'm proficent enough to create it myself. with many thanks scsijon australia