Hi Nicol, thanks for your feedback,
> I had no trouble running the 3.1 release candidate with a static 2.6 kernel; Well, but doesn't a static kernel (I assume you mean that everything you needed was compiled into the kernel statically, rather than as a module) pretty much stand against everything that LEAF seems to stand for (which as far as I'm concerned, is being modular, making sure that people can use it to suit their needs, without having to set up their own build environment)? > also I found the "tinygentoo" embedded stage 3 environment to be useful for > compiling things to run there. Well, what's wrong with the build environment we already have (see http://leaf.sourceforge.net/doc/buc-buildtool.html )? If "what's wrong" with it is that it requires a separate box, and one cannot compile things on the box the packages are to be deployed on - that's by design, I'm not going to build a toolchain on an ElanSC520, which still is a very good box for most home users). Maybe it simply comes down to me not being a gentoo user, and not subscribing to the ideas that seem to be important for people who use that distribution (which is fine with me, as long as I'm allowed to have a different point of view). > Size is an issue. But if you're booting isolinux instead of fd, you can cram > all you want (like, the whole root.lrp and etc.lrp packages) into an initrd > and > just keep it as the root isntead of all that pivoting and remounting. I must be missing something. Last time I checked, isolinux was for booting from El Torito (i.e CD-ROM) images. If one is booting from CD-ROM, what difference does the extra size for a 2.6 kernel make? I guess a 2.6 kernel plus initrd should fit nicely onto a 2.88MB image, so booting off a CD is not going to be an issue. But I fail to see how a big monolithic initrd will help in any way, if one is already booting off a media that has plenty of space available. And I'm rather unsure how one would boot off a compact flash, using isolinux (and all the boxes I have to support boot off CF, and they have neither a floppy, nor a CD-ROM - so unless I misunderstood what isolinux could do, I fail to see how isolinux could help with booting an "embedded box" with LEAF. So far (to me) "embedded" with LEAF means boxes like the Soekris or PC-Engines boxes, possibly even the Nexcom boxes - even though they're not exactly embedded, being 19 inch rack mounts...). Maybe we're just using completely different hardware, which might explain the different focus (or maybe, I'm just missing your point - it wouldn't be the first time that I totally misunderstand something). But if I didn't totally misunderstand the point you're trying to make, I'll have to disagree - to me (even though my opinion only counts for the stuff that I do, and everybody else is free to hold a different opinion, and work on things I wouldn't be working on) LEAF is about creating a platform. The platform should serve as a decent and secure home/home-office firewall out of the box, but it shouldn't require too much work to turn it into something else. To me, that means the distro should be modular. To some (or so it appears to me) modularity seems to be a bad compromise, and optimization for the box that will be running the code is very important. To me, optimization is good, after one has identified a bottleneck. But optimizing just for the sake of optimization seems to be a waste of time to me. I guess those two schools of thought are not easily combined, so it sounds like a "gentoo style" branch might be called for, to suit the needs of some. If there are people willing to put in the work required, and those people are willing to share their results, I'm sure that will happen, and I'm also sure there will be users who will happily use that branch. After all, it seems very well in line with Mike's idea of an evolutionary development model, where different ideas compete with each other, and hopefully, the one that suits the user's needs best will prevail. Martin ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ leaf-devel mailing list leaf-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/leaf-devel
