Harald Hoyer wrote:
Compiling these modules, which are loaded on nearly every PC, in the kernel ...
How about letting the end system administrator add modules statically. Make a utility program which uncompresses a kernel, incrementally adds (loads, as /bin/ld) a list of modules, then re-compresses the modified kernel. The original kernel needs a compiled-in ["meta-"]module to provide hooks for initialization of the added modules.