Advantages of trimmed kernel?

[Chris]

Eric Schuele wrote:
> On 12/10/06 09:50, Erik Trulsson wrote:
>> On Sun, Dec 10, 2006 at 09:05:25AM -0600, Kirk Strauser wrote:
>>> Are there any real advantages to building a kernel stripped of unused
>>> drivers, especially when running it on a fairly large machine?  For
>>> years, I've been dutifully removing device drivers (or more recently,
>>> including GENERIC and using 'nodevice') for everything I don't have. 
>>> But does this actually do anything useful, or am I just tilting at
>>> windmills?
>>
>> It will save a little bit of memory and diskspace and the machine will
>> probably boot slightly faster since it will not need to probe for
>> non-existing devices, but other than that I doubt it will make any
>> difference at all.
>>
> 
> I'll second this one.
> 
> FWIW... Its my understanding that
>  - the memory saved would be negligible.
>  - the performance differences while running are negligible
>  - the boot time is shortened as the kernel will not probe removed devices.
>  - [many|all] removed devices are available and loadable as kld.
>  - as always, remove too much and you can cripple yourself.
> 
> The above is my understandings from the many times this pops up on the
> list.  You might do some searching on the archives as I think this comes
> up quite often.
> 
> I do still however remove things from time to time as it makes me feel a
> little bit more geeky.  :p  But I don't think its necessary for
> performance.
> 
> HTH.
> 

... and to summarize, I have seen users boast about how small they were
able to get the kernel after the compile only to shoot them self in the
foot when it won't boot. I think in general - it's more a pissing
contest for those that like pissing contests.

I think that in the end, the wise choice is to just leave the kernel
along for reasons previously posted.

Just my .02

-- 
Best regards,
Chris

If you fool around with a thing for very long you will
screw it up.

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