I build custom kernels on my linux systems for speed and to reduce the memory footprint of the os. My host system is a macbook pro 2.2 GHz core 2 duo, 2 gb ram, parallels build 5584, OS X 10.5.1. I have debian etch installed as a guest os. It boots to the login screen in about 20 s. I don't know if this is exceptional or not. The memory usage after booting and logging in on a virtual console is 69124k used (checked with top). I don't recall what the generic debian etch kernel (2.6.18) was using, but I recall it was > 100,000 k. It may be the case that further memory reduction is available by removing more unused config options. Logging in to X with fluxbox brings the memory footprint up to 234,000k. The cpu in the host os (leopard) stays around 85-90% idle with linux idling along in parallels. The kernel config file is published from google docs. It has support for ext2 and ext3 filesystems. If you have a different fs deployed in your guest system you will need to edit the config or you won't be able to boot or access some of your partitions. I have not done extensive testing with this kernel. It boots up fine, gets a DHCP lease, and accesses the network without problems. I make no warranty for this configuration. You're on your own. I had to build an initrd with mkinitrd to boot the kernel. Is initrd required for linux guest OS? The URL for the config is http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcmj99xc_6fsh35wdt
I created a new VM for Parallels 6.0.11828 for Gentoo Linux I took this one as a base. Great job!!! Thanks for sharing! It didn't work out of the box tho. My new VM has a SCSI disk, and the ethernet device is also different. https://docs.google.com/document/d/12kOCZBbgiETNOTmrghNRqmh63ogKJHYJv00fNhxvUiU/edit
