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Date:   Sat, 17 Nov 2018 09:49:48 +1100 (AEDT)
From:   Finn Thain <fthain@telegraphics.com.au>
To:     Russell King - ARM Linux <linux@armlinux.org.uk>
cc:     Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>,
        Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>,
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        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
        Daniel Lezcano <daniel.lezcano@linaro.org>,
        John Stultz <john.stultz@linaro.org>,
        linux-m68k@lists.linux-m68k.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 01/13] arm: Fix mutual exclusion in
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On Fri, 16 Nov 2018, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:

> 
> The EBSA110 is probably in a similar boat - I don't remember whether it 
> had 16MB or 32MB as the maximal amount of memory, but memory was getting 
> tight with some kernels even running a minimalist userspace.
> 
> So, it's probably time to say goodbyte to the kernel support for these 
> platforms.
> 

Your call.

Note that removing code from mainline won't help users obtain older, 
smaller, -stable kernel releases, free from the bug we were discussing. 
(The bug appeared in Linux v2.6.32.)

BTW, if you did want to boot Linux on a 16 MB system, you do have some 
options.

https://lwn.net/Articles/741494/
https://lwn.net/Articles/608945/
https://tiny.wiki.kernel.org/

Contributing to this kind of effort probably has value for IoT 
deployments. I suspect it also cuts a small amount of bloat from a large 
number of other Linux systems.

--