Re: Aunt Tillie builds a kernel (was Re: ISA hardware discovery -- the elegant solution)

Charles Cazabon
2002-01-14T18:57:06Z

Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
> Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>:
> > Now to do everything you describe does not need her to configure a custom
> > kernel tree. Not one bit. You think apt or up2date build each user a custom
> > kernel tree ?
>
> Is it OK in your world that Aunt Tillie is dependent on a distro maker? Is
> it OK that she never gets to have a kernel compiled for anything above the
> least-common-denominator chip?

Yes, and yes. Aunt Tillie is running Linux because someone installed a
distribution for her.

She is never going to need anything out of her kernel that her vendor-shipped
update kernels do not provide. She is never going to need the 1% performance
difference she might she if she custom-compiled a kernel for her architecture
rather than using the closest one shipped by her vendor.

> But the point of this game is for Aunt Tillie to have more and better
> choices. Isn't that what we're supposed to be about?

No. We're supposed to be about stuff that works. Vendor-shipped kernels work
for 99.9% of people. The remaining 0.1% have no need for an
"auto-configurator".

Charles
--
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Charles Cazabon <charlesc@discworld.dyndns.org>
GPL'ed software available at: http://www.qcc.sk.ca/~charlesc/software/
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