For example, I’m using Debian, and I think we could learn a thing or two from Mint about how to make it “friendlier” for new users. I often see Mint recommended to new users, but rarely Debian, which has a goal to be “the universal operating system”.
I also think we could learn website design from… looks at notes …everyone else.
If you don’t mind me asking, then how do you know the kernel they use is bloated compared to any other kernel? A vast majority of the device-list stuff is loaded only when that device is detected with kernel modules. You aren’t actually running everything from the entire kernel, it just has support for the devices if it does detect them. which is basically the functionality you are asking for, ad-hoc device modules.
Monolithic kernels aren’t “bad”. That’s subjective. Monolithic kernels have measurable and significant performance benefits, over micro kernels. You also gain a massive complexity reduction. Micro kernels, historically, have not been very successful, e.g. Hurd, because that complexity management is extremely difficult. Not impossible, but so far kernel development has favored monolithic kernels not without reason.
If what you say is actually that easy, why wouldn’t all distro’s just do that during the install, and during updates with their package managers? I believe you could do this in Gentoo, but I don’t know if it has measurable benefits beyond what performance tuning for your specific CPU arch would give you. Since none of those devices you aren’t running are consuming any resources beyond the storage space of the kernel.
“Their kernel is bloated” :D I dont compare with anything, as a linux distros job is pretty much to make me forget other ways to get “the linux stuff” because they are so good.
(Imagine how good Linux support would be if everyone would be on the same distro family like Fedora rawhide/stable/oldstable/centos-stream/almalinux;rockylinux;rhel.)
If that is true, and if the kernel will never load anything not needed for my device, then I am fine with it.
I see how monolithic is less complex and also a huge performance benefit over having the handshake between userspace and kernel space all the time (a meta dev on #techovertea talked about that).
But I would still want to debloat the kernel from unused code, as it is there somewhere and may get activated and used (why would you blocklist kernel modules otherwise?)
Also compiling for x86_64-v4 would probably improve speed, and it is rediculous to have the entire distro built for 20 years old hardware, neglecting all the improvements from over a decade.