Re: x86 kernel flavours was: 2.6.14-1 in incoming, status and future
On Tue, Nov 01, 2005 at 02:03:46AM +1100, Anand Kumria wrote:
> On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 02:31:01 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Oct 30, 2005 at 07:57:34PM +1100, Anand Kumria wrote:
> >
> >> Speaking of kernel flavours (we weren't, but what the hey); is the plan
> >> still to reduce all of the x86 flavours down to two: generic x86 and
> >> generic x86-smp?
> >
> > "Still"? When was this ever the plan?
>
> It was a discussion I observed at various times and places during debconf
> in Helsinki, so I was under the impression that reducing the burden on the
> kernel team was one of their goals.
There was some discussion of cutting down on the number of flavours.
It all centred around, is there any real benifit. For instance,
it is conventional wisdom that 686 will run faster on a UP box than 686-smp,
but for a typical workload, is it really enough to warrant an extra
flavour.
To be honest, most of the reason for extra flavours, especially in i386,
comes down to performance. A 686-smp kernel will run faster on a P4 than
a 386 kernel (n.b 386 and 686 are just the flavour names). In that
case its almost certainly worth it. But its not entirely clear there
is enough benifit to warrant all the flavours in between.
However, as its a performance issue, what is needed is numbers.
I heard that Ubuntu were looking into it, but haven't heard
anything of late.
And the reason for wanting to cut down? Shorter build times,
less confusing package versions... simplicity. Its not a particularly
strong motive, especially as we have been getting better on the
packaging side. And there really hasn't been any discussion of it
since Helsinki. Its probably well enough to let it go back to sleep for
now.
--
Horms
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