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Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:43:22 +0100
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Subject: Re: [alpine-devel] What can we remove from our kernel?
From: =?UTF-8?Q?Roger_Pau_Monn=C3=A9?= <roger.pau@entel.upc.edu>
To: Natanael Copa <ncopa@alpinelinux.org>
Cc: alpine-devel@lists.alpinelinux.org
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2012/1/23 Natanael Copa <ncopa@alpinelinux.org>:
> Hi,
>
> I have been looking at upgrading the kernel to 3.2 and I realize that
> configuring kernel is a pretty big job. I am struggling with keeping
> up with all the new stuff.
>
> This is a request for help in tuning the default kernel config.
>
> In the beginning the strategy was "enable all as module" so users
> themselves could decide what to load and not to load. After a while
> that didn't really work out because kernel is getting very big (delays
> kernel compile, uses diskspace in packages, iso images and on all
> places alpine are installed) and there are things that does not make any
> sense to include at all.
>
> Disabling new stuff by default and only enable on request is not very
> good either. It is nice to boot up alpine on some new hardware and it
> just works - no need to nag developers for adding support and wait til
> next release.
>
> So I am very interested in things that we *can* disable. Things that
> does not make any sense to keep in kernel anymore.
>
> For example: Do we really need PCMCIA support nowdays?
>
> Things to keep in mind:
> * We can expect people with older hardware might want run something
> =C2=A0lightweight like Alpine Linux
> * Networking and virtualization are some of our strong sides.
> * A desktop is nice but lots of desktop things (like flash) will never
> =C2=A0work anyways.
> * Gaming on Alpine is limited and will never be "perfect". (so I
> =C2=A0disabled the wii remote driver...)
>
> So, any suggestions about what we can remove?

Just a stupid thing, but most distros include the xen event channel
device as a module, Alpine instead compiles it inside the kernel, we
could set:

CONFIG_XEN_DEV_EVTCHN=3Dm

to reduce kernel size a little bit. Apart from that I don't know, it's
been quite a lot of time since I saw a computer with PCMCIA slots, but
I guess some people still use it.

> Thanks!
>
> -nc
>
>
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