On 20020131 SI Reasoning wrote:
>I disagree, 
>first, this is a major problem as it completely
>freezes the box and it has to be turned off manually.
>

OK

>second, when you release a distribution it needs to be
>able to run on as many boxes as possible without major
>crashes, if you can turn off an item and it creates
>more stable boxes, then you are less likely to lose
>people, especially newbies
>

Then disable DMA for ide drives, it can crash on some
ServerWorks boxes. So put all Linux users down to
slowliness because the implementation of a feature
(read DMA or APIC) is broken in certain hardware
(ServerWorks or Inspiron).
The DMA problem is easy to solve, it can be disabled
selectively depending on chipset. I do not know if
it can be done also with apic. But but will happen
if not ? Would you release a distro without DMA ?

>thirdly, this is a feature that more experienced users
>will take advantage of and they are more than
>qualified to rebuild their kernel. Mandrake is geared
>towards user friendlyness and having your system crash
>so easily is not user friendly.
>

A newbie without a feature will just see his box is
much slower than windows, and think 'mdk sucks'.

>Because the Fn key is right next to the Ctrl key,
>there has been quite a few times that I am trying to
>change desktops and end up freezing the system. 
>

??

>Finally, this feature has recently been turned on in
>the kernel, prior kernels, esp in the 2.4.16 and prior
>did not have this turned on. It is not an improvement
>when the stock kernel creates more problems as it
>progresses forward. Let the maintainers of APIC
>resolve some of these issues and make this feature
>more stable across many different types of boxes
>before it becomes part of the default kernel.
>

Changelog from mandrake kernel:

* Mon Mar 05 2001 Juan Quintela <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 2.4.2-7mdk
  ...
- Use APIC also now on uniprocessor.

And you always can boot with noapic on BUGGY boxes.

-- 
J.A. Magallon                           #  Let the source be with you...        
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Mandrake Linux release 8.2 (Cooker) for i586
Linux werewolf 2.4.18-pre7-slb #2 SMP Thu Jan 31 00:35:23 CET 2002 i686

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