Re: kernel with supermount
>
> I expect this to appear in upstream kernels fairly soon. The less work Debian
> has to do to test kernels the better. By using a fairly stock kernel, we are
> not as prone to weird Debian only bugs. Also, users tend to grab kernels from
> the upstream just as often as they use the one shipped by Debian. If
> functionality suddenly disappears when the user thought they were upgrading, it
> would be bad.
>
I disagree here.
I have actually a Debian-only bug with a machine using a fairly stock
kernel. The machine locks after running out of real memory and starting
swapping. Not beeing a kernel guru I have no idea of what the problem could
be but I have solved it by installing the stock kernel of Mandrake 7.1
which works fine under the same conditions (the problem is reproducible).
This shows that the 200 patches applied by Mandrake to the stock kernel have
been added for some valid reasons. Unfortunately they don't explain which
problems have been solved by the various patches.
In my opinion we should give a better service to our users by providing a
kernel with more bug fixes and more useful features. If the user chooses
to recompile the kernel he must know what he is doing and take its own
responsabilities.
The supermount patch I proposed in my previous message is great for users
because they don't have to worry about mounting and unmounting floppies and
cdroms, which isn't a very user-friendly way of handling those devices,
specially for people coming from the windows world.
In this sense having the supermount support in our kernel would be a better
service to our users and would also simplify the default system setup.
--
Massimo Dal Zotto
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