From owner-freebsd-stable Wed Dec 19 12:28:12 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from turtle.looksharp.net (cc360882-d.strhg1.mi.home.com [24.13.43.207]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 01DB137B416; Wed, 19 Dec 2001 12:28:01 -0800 (PST) Received: by turtle.looksharp.net (Postfix, from userid 1003) id 9BF5F3ED5; Wed, 19 Dec 2001 15:29:53 -0500 (EST) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by turtle.looksharp.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 983DDBAA5; Wed, 19 Dec 2001 15:29:53 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 15:29:53 -0500 (EST) From: "Brandon D. Valentine" To: Erik Trulsson Cc: Mike Smith , Juha Saarinen , Gerhard Sittig , "stable@freebsd.org" Subject: Re: Waaaarg, we just blew out the kernel again.. In-Reply-To: <20011219191240.GA3505@student.uu.se> Message-ID: <20011219152358.S16371-100000@turtle.looksharp.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Erik Trulsson wrote: >bzip2 is slower and uses more memory than gzip for decompression too. > >I think using bzip2 instead of gzip might be painful on old low-end >machines. (Low-end here defined as 386/486 class machines with 16MB >RAM or less.) While this may /Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc/ there isn't a linux distro in existence that doens't use bzip2 to compress their bloated default kernel. Linux is also touted as the savior of (among other things) low-end hardware. Whether I agree with said touting is another thing entirely. However, bzip2 decompression is not gonna kill off FreeBSD's ability to run on older hardware. For one thing -CURRENT no longer supports the 80386. I've got a friend[0] who builds custom floppy based linux distros for all sorts of applications like Icecast mirroring and even Mosix on a floppy. Most of his development machines are 80486s, mostly DX but some even SX, and 16MB of RAM is the average deployment. He has no trouble unbzipping linux kernels on those machines and I've seen him do it on a 386. [0] - http://www.rimboy.com Brandon D. Valentine -- "Iam mens praetrepidans avet vagari." - G. Valerius Catullus, Carmina, XLVI To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message