Good points. Yes, the kernel is monolithic but built-in vs module still affects initramfs size and boot time. On stability agreed, that’s actually part of the motivation. Less code, fewer potential issues on specific hardware. Also, I might not be quite a sane person, so for past few weeks I tinkered with it so I will be happy with my linux setup on my thinkpad. Then I just decided to share it, because why not?
Essentially yes, it’s a build script that sets config options. The value is that someone already figured out what to disable for AMD ThinkPads specifically (and test it out), so you don’t have to.
You’re right that unused modules don’t load into memory. The real gains are smaller initramfs (faster boot), reduced attack surface, and the zen5 variant adds 500Hz tick, BBRv3 and NTSYNC which you don’t get in vanilla kernels. Filesystems point is fair, I kept the common ones (ext4, xfs, btrfs, f2fs, ntfs3).
That’s actually the plan — working on proper packages so it can be updated like any other kernel. For now the UKI file is a single drop-in which is about as simple as it gets for systemd-boot users.
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Gentoo users would just use the build script (which is there). The binary releases are for people who want the benefits without the 20-minute compile time (and I’ve spent much more than 20 minutes, because I’ve recompiled and tested the hell out of it for multiple times). Trust is a valid concern, the config files are in the repo so you can verify what’s in there.