Comment 3 for bug 1866149

Linux KVM is meant for VM guests and probably therefore was set to CONFIG_BASE_SMALL=1.
The discussion "if this makes sense or not" is up to the kernel team but it seems this bug has got no attention by them yet :-/.

I was quickly assessing the case and found:
- Linux-generic is on CONFIG_BASE_SMALL=0 in B/F/G/H as one would expect.
- linux-kvm in B/F/G/H was all the time set to CONFIG_BASE_SMALL=0
- the option we talk about here is [1][2]
- IMHO "speed loss for saving a few KB" does not sound right. IIRC linux-kvm was meant more for
  speed than density. We are virtual, but not as small as an embedded controller for example.
- This goes back to [3] when linux-kvm was introduced
- I didn't find a commit in [4] that listed any extended reasoning/discussion when enabling [5] it.

IMHO I agree and this should be switched in the kernel config.
I don't think that changing the pid-max was wrong. Even older Xenial linux-kvm running in 2020 can be considered bigger than what CONFIG_BASE_SMALL was meant for.

But further actions are for the kernel Team to consider and make. Therefore I'm adding a src:linux task, subscribing some more people and pinging the kernel team internally to get some attention.

[1]: https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.11-rc5/2.6.11-rc5-mm1/broken-out/base-small-introduce-the-config_base_small-flag.patch
[2]: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/init/Kconfig#L1518
[3]: https://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/config/xenial/linux-kvm/4.4.0-1004.9/amd64-config.flavour.kvm
[5]: https://git.launchpad.net/~canonical-kernel/ubuntu/+source/linux-kvm/tree/debian.kvm/config/config.common.ubuntu#n157
[4]: https://git.launchpad.net/~canonical-kernel/ubuntu/+source/linux-kvm