Okay,
I have mentioned this before, but I would like to be very much stronger
this time:
---> It's time to get rid of zImage once and for all. <---
Why is that? Well, when Linux was originally created, DOS memory was
considered a critical resource and very few computer manufacturers would
have ever considered burning this resource for anything that wasn't
absolutely critical. This isn't the case anymore, and we're seeing an
increasing number of BIOS extensions -- some of them hacks, some of them
very necessary -- considering this available space.
With zImage, it is very hard to put the ceiling of the boot loader any
lower than approximately 0x9c000. This isn't good enough when a bunch
of these extensions are present.
With bzImage, combined with making the setup code segment-relocatable
(which shouldn't be too hard), we should be able to boot with much less
DOS memory available in the system. However, this requires bootloader
restructuring which would make it very hard to retain support for zImage
kernels.
So, given that, does anyone see any reason at all to support zImage
kernels anymore?
-hpa
-- <hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private! "Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot." http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/puzzle.txt- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jun 15 2000 - 21:00:29 EST