Re: More linux hate

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From: peter (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: More linux hate
Date: 02:19 on 29 Feb 2004
> I'm changing boot devices, which means that the initrd image (because I
> don't believe in recompiling my kernel) has to be updated to specifically
> load the IDE drivers at boot time, so it can load the stinking drivers.

I first ran into this with Dead Rat 4.1, where they started leaving
drivers out and loading them later to save space... unfortunately
they forgot to include the Adaptec SCSI drivers in the floppy image
(apparently everyone at Red Hat at the time was on Buslogic) so I
had to get a special version.

Up until recently, there hasn't been a problem on FreeBSD because
while it supported loadable drivers they're not loaded by default.
That's changed. It's still saner than Linux in that you can gen up
a custom kernel with the drivers you want and you know they'll be
there, AND you know you'll be able to gen up the same kernel next
time... but it's not just a matter of "doconfig...copy...kernel...
to...root..." any more.

My software hate for today is loadable drivers. I suspect that
compiling in drivers for 80% of the cards out there would probably
add less bulk to the kernel than the loadable driver support. I
know I have never had any problems with the size of a "Christmas
Tree" kernel. I mean, there's people doing things like putting JVMs
in the kernel to run Java drivers or some damn thing, all the
generic chipset drivers can't possibly be enough to worry about in
that.

But there's some damn "loadable drivers are good" meme out there
that goes along with the "IPSEC is perfect" and personal firewalls
and I'm sure I can suck Microsoft in here as well but I'll let it
all peter out now...

> Yeah, that's definitely nice.  I'd consider that except my main machine is
> a dual celeron, and it takes at least 12 hours just to compile xfree86.

Wimp. Last year I installed Mac OS X on a Powermac 7500 with a 132MHz
pre-G3 processor and 96M RAM, and then tried to compile Tcl 8.4. Just
to see how bad it was.

The install took 20 hours.

I gave up on the compile.

There's stuff above here

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