Re: MIPS Kernel size

[Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>]

On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 11:12:10AM -0500, Smith, Todd wrote:

> I am still interested in some older PDA usage that has limited resources.  I
> certainly don't want to hold up or stop current kernel dev but is there a
> problem with keeping small kernel and/or userspace limits?

Different tradeoffs.  In general the kernel is optimized for performance,
even at the cost of significant amounts of memory.  As the most infamous
example the kernel is using lots of fairly complex hash and radix trees.

But why would a system that has just a default route need the same kind
of data structures and algorithms it takes to route packets on backbone
router in the default free zone?  Why would you drive a moon rocket to
for shopping?

Linux has generally developped in the direction of larger machines and
higher scalability and sometimes that's causing fairly bad itching.  The
-tiny tree is an attempt to correct this.  It's a development tree but
with the goal of merging changes back into the standard kernel and I
hope much of it will be merged back into 2.6 - 2.8 is too far in the
future to wait for ...

  Ralf