From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755593AbZCKBro (ORCPT ); Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:47:44 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753514AbZCKBrf (ORCPT ); Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:47:35 -0400 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([198.137.202.10]:45121 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752533AbZCKBrf (ORCPT ); Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:47:35 -0400 Message-ID: <49B71814.2090604@zytor.com> Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:47:00 -0700 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (X11/20080501) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Andi Kleen CC: Linux Kernel Mailing List , the arch/x86 maintainers Subject: Re: x86: removing zImage support? References: <49B703D4.1000008@zytor.com> <87fxhkg8qn.fsf@basil.nowhere.org> In-Reply-To: <87fxhkg8qn.fsf@basil.nowhere.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Andi Kleen wrote: > "H. Peter Anvin" writes: > >> I'm thinking again about removing zImage support. An "allnoconfig" >> kernel (with CONFIG_EMBEDDED=y to expose additional knobs, and >> CONFIG_BINFMT_ELF=y so it can do anything at all) is currently 487K on >> i386 -- very close to the upper limit of 512K for zImage. > > An alternative would be to do a concentrated effort to get rid of text bloat > again. I bet it could be stripped down to much below that again by just > attacking some low hanging fruit. > That wasn't exactly the point. The whole point is whether or not we can reduce the complexity of the code by removing a mode which has few or no users. -hpa -- H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center I work for Intel. I don't speak on their behalf.