2.6.23 kernel
John Summerfield
debian at herakles.homelinux.org
Sun Oct 14 11:32:59 UTC 2007
Ed Greshko wrote:
> 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.
That should advantage Slack.
>
> 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.....
You should also include the kernel size. I was amazed when i first used
debian to find the bare kernel didn't support my IDE hardware: the IDE
drivers were modules.
If you still have both, find how many modules each has under
/lib/modules. And, if you still haven't got a life, see if you can pick
the differences: one might, for example, have madwifi even though the
HAL is binary-only.
Part of the requirement of any commercial distro is that it must support
all likely hardware. That's constrained, in part, by attitudes to lack
of source: Debian hacks stuff out of the kernel because some is not
DFSG-free.
>
--
Cheers
John
-- spambait
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