On Friday 09 January 2004 10:25 am, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:
I know it's possible by using "make xconfig" or something similar to trim the kernel by eliminating stuff I'll never use and then recompile a slimmer, more svelte version of it that works just as well. But given the speed and memory size of most computers these days (including mine), is there any noticeable benefit in doing that? Will I ever notice a performance improvement?
Paul Abrahams
Paul, The performance increase will be minimal at best. The modularized kernel will only load what is needed or told to load. Performance increases will probably be noticed more between actual kernel versions, as some of the hard drive controllers, chipsets, etc., have code that is upgraded and improved on. In the past I have "trimmed" built-in (non-module) kernel items, and eliminated un-needed modules at compile time, to reduce the overall size so that it fits on a floppy. With the 2.6 kernels... (I have not compiled any yet that would fit on a floopy), if you really need a boot disk with 2.6, create a bootable CD-RW to use. If you know your hardware, you can eliminate lots of unecessary modules, which will greatly reduce compile time, especially if you are compiling a kernel from scratch. Most Linux distros have kernels with every possible module compiled, as they need to boot on a wide variety of hardware. George -- Linux 2.6.0-mm2 #1 Thu Jan 1 20:30:42 EST 2004 i686 11:18am up 7 days 14:40, 2 users, load average: 0.04, 0.15, 0.11