Re: A newbie's view

["Seth M. Landsman" <seth@job.cs.brandeis.edu>]

> > The real question is, *is* there anything obvious - aside from
> > drivers, and new drivers will always be needed - missing from the
> > kernel?
> 
> Well, what do you think?  Is there something obvious missing
> or are it just our perfectionistic and sick minds that want
> something to be missing...

	Well, I, personally, don't think that distributing binaries is
necessarily the best way to go about it, but a 'better' configuration
system might be a nice future addition.  
	For example, I have several linux boxes which are all mission
critical and have uptimes in the double, if not triple, digits.  When I go
and grab a new kernel, and my desk is too messy, I won't quite remember
what I did with that piece of paper which said what the IO port on my
soundcard is.  Wouldn't it be nice if, during configuration, these values
could be configured by groking the currently running kernel or probing
hardware?
	Furthermore, as more hardware is supported, and more people who
don't know the different between an adaptec 2940 and 1940 SCSI card try to
configure the kernel, wouldn't it be nice if a more reasonable (and
correct) defaults be detected?

	These needs fleshing out, of course, but a 'wizard'-type
configuration system would be nice to have someday.  (BTW, all my machines
are 100% or 99% Linux (my laptop has a games partition ... :(), so this
isn't a windows-user opinion).

	Another thought, what about a `make test` which goes through the
kernel you just built and makes sure it doesn't include anything that is
known to be incompatible?

	I'd almost be willing to dig into one or both of these (though my
supply of tuits is always dangerously low).

-Seth

--
"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion"
-
Linux-future: thinking about the future of the Linux kernel
http://humbolt.nl.linux.org/lists/