one good reason to avoid modules where we cn is that each module that gets loaded wastes a partial page of memory (arguably ~2k/module on average), on a system with only 256M ram this can add up to be a noticable amount of memory lost if you go the route some advocate and make everything a module.
and given that there is only 1G of 'disk' available to the system to store modules, I would argue that trying to provide modules for all sorts of esoteric hardware (USB video was mentioned) is a waste of resources. make the other modules available for download and installation as needed, but don't eat up the space otherwise modules are useful for when you have hardware that's used very infrequently and the driver is fairly large, but I don't think that there are many cases where this is a good argument. I've always built my kernels as monolithic as possible, even for my laptops, so I know that it can be done (except a few drivers that need to load firmware). while there are some (vocal) kernel developers who feel that the kernel shouldn't even understand disk partitioning, and that everything should be a module, there are many others who feel that the kernel should not require external assistance for simple situations. Linus has commented that he also builds his kernels monolithic rather then with lots of modules, so we're in good company if we choose to do the same. <rant> I haven't compiled my own kernels for the XO yet, so I don't know how much can be tweaked to reduce the size, but it looks like there is some room for tweaking. however, the biggest benefits look like they would be in cleaning up the userspace boot process. there is a _lot_ of stuff started that may not be needed in the stable hardware environment of the XO laptop where there is really only one program active at a time (dbus comes to mind) remember that XO is based on Fedora, which is designed for maximum features and flexibility, not for efficiancy. This translates into poor performance for the user. I know that the XO has a slow CPU, but I just recently retired a 333MHz laptop that I was running Slackware on, and it was far more responsive then the XO is (even with a faster CPU and a solid-state drive). there is a LOT of room for improvement here. </rant> David Lang _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
