design focus [was Large initrd, was booting problem (udev related?)]

On Fri, Aug 03, 2007 at 05:54:57PM +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote:
On Thu, Aug 02, 2007 at 08:34:00PM -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:

However, don't all those modules in the initrd end up staying in the
kernel anyway, or do they get unloaded during boot? If they stay, and
'most' modules get added, how is that different than having a huge
monolithic kernel? It may not matter on a box with huge memory, but I
have mostly small-memory boxes.

I may be wrong, but I think that only the needed modules are actually
loaded.

As for xorg-video-foo, that's why I don't install the xorg metapackage.
I choose from its dependencies what I need.

Same here

All these extra packages together take a lot of disk space, a lot of
download bandwidth to install and maintain.


/rant

There's a growing kitchen-sink approach in Debian (perhaps all of Linux,
I don't know). There's the kernel/initrd size, there's the variable
device name problems, to name two. It suggests to me that there's a
missing piece of infrastructure. Perhaps the installer system should
create a hardware inventory file that initrdtools (or whatever the
nom de jure) can access to generate a tailord initrd, that apt can
consult for what drivers to download, etc. The installer rescue mode
could offer a tool to regenerate the inventory file for times when one
changes hardware.

/end rant

True, but you have to consider the competition.

I guess the problem is related to this notion of trying to compete with
MS. If people 'buy' brand A because they like features x,y, and z, and
brand B has the goal of gaining market share, it will tend to morph into
a clone (feature-wise) of brand A. However, it will tend to take on
some of the compromises of brand B that go with features x, y, and z.

I stick with debian on my big box because of inertia, the debian policy,
the debian security support for all packages in debian/main, and the
absolute ease of applying bug fixes with aptitude. Debian also supports
my trackball mouse's scroll wheel (IMPS/2) whereas OpenBSD does not.
However, my older computers are transitioning away from Debian to BSD
because of the newer debian (perhaps all linuxes) being so much slower
on them than either older debians or new BSDs.



If you plug a new device
into a Windows machine the driver gets installed automatically or you
get prompted for the drivers if Windows doesn't have them. You have to
admit that this is pretty convenient functionality which has been there
at least since Windows 2000 (how this is cluttering the registry and the
fact that it isn't always working is a totally different topic).

That convenience comes at a huge price in terms of system resource
utilization on boxes with few resources. Compare it to OpenBSD, for
example, where there is no such thing as eth0, but network interfaces
based on driver name (eg. ne) and configuration; my 486 has one NIC as
ne1. Its not convenient to have to look up in a file for the supported
configurations of different hardware to ensure that your NIC is set up
to match one of them then configure networking based on ne1. However,
its only done once.


The big advantage on linux (and especially Debian) is that power users
still have the possibility to customize the setup (like using a
different mkinitrd, different options, purge unneeded packages, ...)
that a Windows user doesn't have.


True, but rather than hotplugging, I would prefer a program that can be
run as needed each time a new piece of hardware is attached for the
first time, which would create the device node and load the appropriate
module and parameters. Once done, it would get out of the way. On
subsequent attachment of a device, everything would be pre-existing.

It all comes down to the notion of competition and market share. If
Debian is going to focus on market share and competing with MS it will
have to target MS's target market. Since I'm not in that market, Debian
will be shifting its focus on the market I'm in. It won't be that I'm
drifting away from Debian but that Debian is drifting away from me.

Doug.


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