Re: 780 files in /usr/share/zoneinfo/
Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> writes:
> The kernel, compressed, is larger than that. The initrd needed to boot the
> kernel is also typically larger than that. A modern system has more CPU
> cache than that. At some point trying to save bytes is a waste of
> developer
> and administrator effort, and 3.5MB in 2020 is well past that point. If
> you
> want a minimal system, debian isn't for you. Instead, you'll need to hand
> craft every file to make sure it isn't "wasting space". If that's your
> thing, great. But it's just not a focus for debian.
About the only place one still needs to think this way is
with embedded systems where the computer is there to manage a
machine of some kind, anything from a lathe to a food processor
to a cement mixer, whatever .
General-purpose computers are optimized to have as many
resources as one can cram in to a higher and higher-density box
so a few MB here or there aren't noticed but embedded systems are
optimized with different priorities and one may discover that
this box may be lightning fast but a bit skimpy on data storage.
I am thinking of things such as cable TV boxes and
dedicated audio-visual appliances that use DSP to emulate complex
and expensive hardware by using mathematical algorithms that
cause the system to decode digital TV signals or route internet
traffic rapidly.
If you aren't in to trying to modify some sort of
embedded system to do something it wasn't originally designed to
do then ram and storage are getting cheaper by the day and some
things just aren't worth worrying about.
Martin McCormick
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