2.6.23 kernel

[Ed Greshko]

John Summerfield wrote:

>> bloated kernels increase the probability of exploits
> 
> If someone gets close enough to use an otherwise-unused kernel module,
> the battle's already gone to the intruder.

Funny you should mention that....  I think some folks have no idea what they
are talking about when they use the word "bloat".  At least they don't
define what they are calling "bloat".

For fun...and since it was raining here part of the day....

I did a default "all" install of the current stable slackware and an "all"
install of the latest F8-beta on the exact same hardware.  I then started
them both in run level 3.

As soon as the systems were up I checked top and lsmod.  Now, this wasn't
entirely one-to-one since on my F8 install I did use LVM while I didn't on
the slackware.  Also, slackware is at 2.6.21.5 while F8 is 2.6.23.0.

F8 loaded a total of 60 modules
Slackware loaded     38 modules

The /lib/modules of F8 was 57MB while slackware is 52MB.

Now, the really interesting thing was that top showed F8 to be using 147.9MB
out of 512MB while slackware was consuming 179.4MB.

I find that interesting.....