Valuable to try to build a *small* kernel?

[Mike Odegard]

Barry Gershenfeld wrote:

>
> It seems to me that the "small kernel thing" really had to do with the 
> 512 KB limit
> imposed by the loader.  This was dealt with by compressing the image, 
> then by
> modularizing a lot of drivers.  For all I know they've got loaders to 
> handle it now.
> But 2-5 MB for a kernel in 256 MB of memory isn't much of a dent.
> Maybe worry about ram buffers that these drivers allocate?
>
> Barry
>
>

Doesn't the agressive use of cache and buffers in the 2.4.x kernel 
really speed things up, when you have plenty of ram?
Since I upgrade my computers regularly, it's harder for me to tell, but 
I am convinced that the 2.4 kernels in Redhat 7.1+ is faster than in the 
2.2 kernel in Redhat 6.2.

Does anyone else remember the difference in performance between a 2.2 
and 2.4 kernel?