Re: CVS commit: src/share/man/man4

[Marc Balmer <mbalmer%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

Am 30.08.11 18:44, schrieb Jukka Ruohonen:
> On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 06:33:18PM +0200, Marc Balmer wrote:
>> Am 30.08.11 18:22, schrieb Jukka Ruohonen:
>> And why should GENERIC *not* support hardware that is available, works,
>> and is of use to someone?  If GENERIC is to support only the idea of
>> what an OS should look for some developers, why do we ship GENERIC at
>> all and not tell folks to create their own kernels?
> 
> I don't disagree on principle.[1] But sooner or later you end up with
> tremendous amount legacy stuff and things that 0.001 % of people use.
> And then people go and compile their own kernels because of that.

To address this issue, I think we are slowly moving towards modularized
kernels.  So what I said is about drivers and kernel subsystem, that are
not yet available as modules.  But modules are still WIP, and I think
there are still a few problems left to be solved before we can say we
are an OS with a modular kernel.

> Do you think Linux distributions ship kernels with all their drivers
> compiled into one monolithic unit? And why not?

I don't care what Linux does.  This is BSD.  Memory does not matter.
There is no reason to not include stuff in a kernel.

> 
> - Jukka.
> 
> [1] For years, it was more than annoying that even the installation kernel
>     lacked e.g. cgd(4). Even today, many *important* things are commented
>     out, while many inane things from the early 1990s are compiled in.

And when uncomment sth you need, you get yelled at, "USE YOUR OWN KERNEL
CONFIG"....