On Mon, 2 Feb 2004, Ralf Baechle wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 07:43:25PM +0100, Karsten Merker wrote:
> > Depends on what you consider "that small". Kernel size is a large
> > issue for the Cobalt series due to the firmware limits (although
> > Peter Hortons attempts at a Cobalt bootloader will hopefully help in
> > this regard). Embedded stuff and PDAs is another field where 2.6
> > currently seems to pose a problem.
>
> I really hate that term "embedded" - it's very hard to define. Anyway,
> there's an increasing amount of so-called embedded systems with several
> gigabytes of memory and even for much smaller system 2.6 is already
> making 2.4 look pale.
Indeed. Today's embedded can easily be larger than desktop/server from only
a few years ago...
Fortunately, system size is still important for some applications. Witness the
existence of a System Size Working Group in the CE Linux Forum. So yes, some
people still care.
> The Cobalt case is special; it's firmware could almost be the definition
> of the term crap ...
Can't you use the firmware to load a second stage booter, which can load larger
kernels?
Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
Geert
--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org
In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
-- Linus Torvalds
