July 2001
Intermediate to advanced
224 pages
5h 17m
English
This section examines each of the major software subsystems to determine the best approach to take to optimize them for size.
The kernel loader’s job is to move the kernel image from long-term storage to memory. Once this job is complete, the loader is no longer needed, and memory that it occupies can be used for other purposes. Because the loader is hardware-specific, there’s not much to say about it here, except that in some cases it has to deal with a lot of different device types. If you’re really pressed for space, you may be able to remove some code that deals with devices you’re not using. Any code removed from the loader is a double win because this code is uncompressed. However, because usually very ...
Read now
Unlock full access