On Tuesday 29 January 2002 18.45, Reinhard Katzmann wrote: > Hi! > > On Tue, Jan 29, 2002 at 06:00:44PM +0100, Michael wrote: > > On Tuesday 29 January 2002 17.41, Alexander Skwar wrote: > > > Really "lots" of users? Well, you may need it, but for instance I > > > don't have any ext2 filesystems, and also no ide stuff. But still > > > these "drivers" are compiled into the kernel. For *me* it would be > > > better if these were modules. > > I guess you guys mixed up xfs (x file system) and xfs (X font server) ;-) > > > It's not really the same thing, having ide and ext2 stuff compiled into > > the kernel doesn't really hurt you, it's just some unused bloat that with > > todays hardware prices isn't that hard to live with. > > As we need to have initrd images (according to my experience, I could not > get a kernel to run without initrd.img including a older 2.4.17 kernel) > we could have ide as a module (but currently it won't work, I tested > this with a self-compiled kernel but only got problems). > > > If xfs get's removed it would hurt those who need it, but if it stays > > most ppl wont see it and those who does with see a small bloatness, that > > isn't very hard to live with. > > And with this I think keeping xfs is the same as keeping most other > > things (like the ide drivers), you'll keep the big userbase and only > > those that really really want a 100% optimized system will notice. > > XFS (like ext3, reiserfs) can be a module without any problems as it gets > integrated into the initrd image if it's not in the kernel automatically > using mkinitrd. It is even officially unsupported according to the mails > I received (at least with ext3, I don't think it's any difference with > xfs). Booting from ext3 fs with ext3 as a module works fine on all the > systems I have tested. The general kernel should IMO be as much modularized > as possible (my kernel is a bit beyond 700K while the 2.4.8 Mandrake kernel > was above 1 MB!) > > Regards, > > Reinhard
I know that we where talking about the x font server all the time, even though my point would be as valid IMHO if we where talking about the filesystem, and that it's better to ship things as modularized as possible. I was never trying to argue that we should compile everything into the kernel. Yes, in the mail I was responding to he complained about the fact that it was compiled into the kernel. I realize that it was bad for me to take it as example, but what I wanted to point out was that it's better to include stuff (in the distribution, not compiled into the kernel ;), like xfs, into the distribution compared to leaving them, since including them doesn't really hurt anyone except minimalists (who only want the stuff that is really needed and specialized for there system). If mandrake (and all other distributions) had chosen to install just the things that are really needed, ppl who wants other features would have to either heavily modify the distributions or starting to build there own which would destroy the whole point in distributions. If distributions are shiped with th emost generic tools (wth lots of, partly, bloated features), like xfs, it's more usable for a wider range of ppl, even though it should be as easy as possible to remove the "bloatness" and replace things with more specialized things. Hope this cleared up what I was trying to point out ;) Michael Andreen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
