Well you can build a kernel with modules only for the target system, which does cut down on build time yes, but in general terms that's pretty useless for someone maintaining a kernel for a distribution or administering more than one box - and the way Linux is developed, it's not that practical to maintain your own personal kernel build for a single machine either. So generally, distributions are providing kernels with the 'full' kernel build including all of the aforementioned cruft.
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