On Sat, Jun 30, 2018 at 1:11 PM, Andy Kosela <akosela@andykosela.com> wrote:


On Saturday, June 30, 2018, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
Greetings,

I'd like to thank everybody that sent me data for my unix kernel size stuff. There's two artifacts I've crated. One I think I've shared before, which is my spreadsheet:


It would be interesting to compare it to Linux throughout the history.  I can still compile a minimal latest Linux kernel that is around 2M.  Not bad if you ask me.

It's possible to build FreeBSD much smaller as well (some ARM ports can get that small)... But that's not the comparison I was going for since that often understates the effect of the SCSI/SATA stack you need these days, or the network stack, or other technology that's considered 'standard.' It's entirely due to ease of use and cheap memory.

I didn't include a growth of the Linux kernel due to the less-prevalent use of GENERIC-type kernels there, and a lack of good data sources I could mine quickly for apples-to-apples comparisons over time.

Warner