&gt;  They can&#x27;t really get away without device drivers<p>I agree with you 100%, but it does make me think. Every Linux installation I&#x27;ve done in the last five or so years has been either under ESXi, or on AWS.<p>I&#x27;m sure I&#x27;m not alone in that, and that&#x27;s a trend that&#x27;s going to continue to grow.<p>How much of the kernel is drivers that are absolutely never going to useful in that scenario?<p>How much room is there for distributions to start supplying a kernel configuration with half of it never built?