[nderjung]

In fact this is not true with Linux. We did a study of this[0] and found that there are too many interdependencies between Linux kernel subsystems. The smallest, usable Linux kernel we test with sometimes is around 30MB.

In comparison, compiling NGINX together with Unikraft results in a kernel size of under 2MB. This means that there is 28MB of kernel we didn't need or want.

[0]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.12721 (See Figure 1)

[deivid]

You can get an uncompressed Linux image (built with only virtio support, including SMP and networking) under 12MB; it's not 2, but also not 30MB. This is without LTO, so you could probably get it lower.