I hesitate to add to this thread, but I have a point that I don't
*think* has been made already; to wit:
On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, you wrote:
| But it is the point here. The Linux kernel supports this hardware and the
| earlier version of Mandrake supported the hardware. If we are going to dump
| this support, then Mandrake should at the very least not label the product
| stable, as they have done, and develop some sort of patch for the problem.
| The problem doesn't occur in the Linux part of the distribution, the problem
| only occurs in the software that Mandrake wrote for the distribution.
Actually, the way that Mandrake (or any other distribution) supports
the hardware for the installation is to use special kernel used for the
distribution. This special kernel must fit on the floppy (since
reading the CD-ROM driver from the CD-ROM is a classic "bootstrap
problem").
There's no surprise the that "regular" kernel supports your CD-ROM;
given the existance of modules, the regular kernel can be of
essentially infinite potential size in order to support everything; the
install kernel, by contrast is strictly limited in its size; as newer
devices are added, older devices *must* be dropped. It's just a matter
of mathematics.
Now I'm not sure if that's what happened here or not, but I believe
that it's helpful to understand how this works.
Thank you for your attention.l
--
"Brian, the man from babbleon-on" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Brian T. Schellenberger http://www.babbleon.org
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