Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 14 Jan 2002 19:38:24 +0100 | From | Dave Jones <> | Subject | Re: Aunt Tillie builds a kernel (was Re: ISA hardware discovery -- the elegant solution) |
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On Mon, Jan 14, 2002 at 12:52:28PM -0500, Eric S. Raymond wrote: > She complains of occasional lockups, and that she gets skips when > playing her Guy Lombardo MP3s. Melvin says, over the phone: "Yup, > that version had some VM problems. And you need the low-latency stuff > that went in three releases ago.
... and the 200 patches that the vendor added that she's become so used to just being there...
> Just click on the 'kernel update' icon on your desktop."
*sigh*, and the package updater to get a new kernel for $distro is insufficient because ? distro kernel update has the following advantages. - Comes complete with the 200 patches already applied. - Is _tested_ by $distrovendor. - If it screws up, and Aunt Tillie shelled out for support (which of course, she did being the 'needing support' type) $distrovendor will help. Ringing support and saying "Melvin told me to install a new kernel, and now my box doesn't boot" may not be a supportable scenario for all vendors.
> So why doesn't she use Red Hat or Mandrake's RPM update? Maybe she's > running something else.
Red Hat & Mandrake are not the only distros with online update, in fact, it's probably considered a must-have feature for most distros these days.
> (You ain't going to tell me Aunt Tillie is ready > for Debian apt-get, either.)
Wait a minute. Not ready for 'apt-get', but ready to build & run a kernel made up of a collection of random patches on Melvin's say-so ?
> Maybe she wants a kernel that's compiled > for her AMD Athlon K6 rather than a 386.
Various distro vendors update facilities give you this option.
> OK, so she doesn't know what processor she has
Some even autodetect.
> We have the technology to do all of this now;
Indeed. It's called YaST, Red Carpet, Mandrake Update, apt-get, apt-rpm, and a plethora of other such tools.
> It takes a different way of thinking than most hackers are used to.
Yup. One where reinventing the wheel seems appropriate.
> We're proud of our mad programming skillz and our ability to wrestle > with arcana. That pride isn't a bad thing -- except when it gets in > the way of designing systems that Aunt Tillie can use.
The systems are designed, and the punchline is, that they work, and they're being used out there today.
Dave.
-- | Dave Jones. http://www.codemonkey.org.uk | SuSE Labs - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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