I should mention that Linux Mandrake 7.2 and 8.0 both detected
my HP CD-Writer 8100 during installation, (as well as my IDE Zip
drive) and correctly installed the necessary modules for
ide-scsi, sg, and the rest. The kernel config was correctly
set up with:
"hdb=ide-scsi hdd=ide-floppy"
and as a result "cdrecord --scanbus" identified the drive with
an out-of-the box Linux Mandrake install. I can burn CD's just
fine, all it took was a quick read of the cdrecord man page.
So what's the problem? The only time I had to read the
documentation about ide-scsi is when I compiled my own kernel.
My suggestion is to not bother the kernel developers. They are
mostly volunteers and simply work on what interests them. I read
the linux kernel mailing lists, they are fighting about deeper
problems right now. :-)
Instead, talk to the distribution maintainers. They have the
power to install things correctly so they will work for the 90%
of Linux users who don't compile their own kernels.
Anyone who has the "guts" to download and compile their own
kernel can also be expected to read the documentation on how to
get or keep their CD writer working.
Perhaps the only thing that the kernel developers *need* to do
is add some documentation that helps people config their kernels
correctly if they compile their own. Send a patch that adds the
appropriate text to the kernel config.help, and perhaps an
IDE-CDWriter.txt file in the /Documentation subdirectory.
Finally, in the 2.5 Linux kernel development tree, the new kernel
configuration language (CML 2) will start to be used, and it will
have new features that help "average users" correctly configure
their kernels. Probably that would be a good time to make some
changes to the "default" configurations.
Torrey Hoffman
PS. Everyone seems so *angry* about this stuff!
Relax! It's free software! It's supposed to be FUN!
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