[blackmilk]

I'm attempting to make a more streamlined system, mainly by reconfiguring the kernel.
I've listed all the entries and there are 303. Obviously, I won't/don't need all these. Though, I'm wondering what the benefits would be to reconfiguring, if the performance increase is great, then I can't see why the OpenBSD community frowns upon those that reconfigure.

I guess the question is, will my system benefit greatly from reconfiguring my kernel?

Thanks.

[bsdjunkie]

If everything is running fine and you have a reasonable fast system, there is really no need to compile a new kernel.

Then again, if you just want to play and learn, cutting things out and seeing what breaks is the way to do it ;)

[Vile]

There are other things you can do to enhance performance besides tweak the kernel config and just removing some unused options will trim your already small kernel down to what... a few Kbytes less?

Look at your file system options like softdeps and async mounting and/or use good hardware (stay away from realtek nics).

[blackmilk]

By recompiling, I hope to see a few options that aren't enabled by default. So I would be removing and adding support, mainly for the experience, though I am trying to gain a performance increase.

Good hardware is almost out of the question, unless its cheap :) . Maybe I've been mislead on Realtek, the NICs came highly recommended...from a windows user... what makes them so bad?

the fs tweak did enter my mind, though I've been up to my eyeballs in badly designed web pages and tripe that they like to call help. I see what the book meant by "strongly discourage".. you have to decipher the page before you can use it :( I'll make some time :)

[Vile]

There is not much to applying things like softdep and async, just a simple change to /etc/fstab. Just read the FAQ on the website.

Here is one of the many mailing list posts by an OpenBSD developer commenting on the quality of realtek cards:

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openbsd-misc&m=106875478922130&w=2