Re: kernel-{image,headers} package bloat
On Mon, Apr 23, 2001 at 06:59:55AM +0800, zhaoway wrote:
> > this actually *helps* new users.
>
> Why?
Because it teaches them to perform a task they should have to perform, at
the right time. At some point, you *have* to stop tying your children's
shoelaces, and teach them to do it for themselves.
> I can see your suggestion help mirrors (The trade-off is
> questionable.) But I can't see why it could help users.
Questionable?!?
Have you seen ftp.au.d.o and mirror.aarnet.edu.au lately? (Admittedly,
aarnet sucks and is broken half the time, but has the exact same breakage as
ftp.au.d.o, which is normally fine). The mirrors which have trouble keeping
up, and have out-of-sync packages, don't need *any* more load, least of all
load like this.
> I certainly don't think that make users (even make the task easier) to
> compile a kernel can do help to most of the users (That is *not* a
> task they should be bothered at all.) And I certainly disagree that
> they who don't want compile a kernel don't belong to our user base.
There's a *reason* RedHat exists.
BTW, we're already asking them to understand the installer and dselect (and
I have had to help some of my friends, all of whom who were very good at
Linux, through this), so why not the kernel? If the figures Craig's
throwing around of 110meg per kernel version are true, then that's
absolutely unacceptable. Think of: out-of-sync mirrors (they don't need more
load, or bloat to fill up the bandwidth and hard drives), and countries that
pay by the meg for bandwidth.
Sure, I'll reconsider this argument when the new debian-installer is ready
(which sounds great already), but right now, no way.
--
Daniel Stone
Linux Kernel Developer
daniel@kabuki.openfridge.net
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