Building kernels (Re: Contents of /boot and /etc/yaboot.conf)
"Chris" == Chris Doherty <c_doherty@hotpop.com> writes:
Chris> That's not quite what I meant: given that not building in
Chris> initrd means that one *must* have the right filesystems
Chris> [....]
Chris> Then again, I subscribe to the "first do no harm"
Chris> philosophy of IT - it seems more useful to me for the
Chris> defaults on these tools to give you a bootable system
Chris> without necessarily optimizing very well; the optimization
Chris> can come later (and of course should be supported by the
Chris> same tools).
I can't disagree with you completely, but finally we are stating
opinions. I also believe you might be missing some historical context
here (i've been using Linux, on Intel CPUs, since 1993 so I can claim
to have some ;-) I believe the defaults are actually acceptable.
The Debian philosophy (as far as I can tell, and with the arrogance to
pretend to speak for the project) seems to be that users should not
have to compile kernels. If you are building a kernel you are, by
default, and a developer or "expert" user. That was not the way Linux
used to be a few years ago. Four or five years ago it was common for
users to build kernels, and initrd was not widely understood or used,
and x86 hardware was the platform of choice and all the modern
complications of supporting everything from IBM mainframes to ARM
handhelds did not exist. That is not the case today: Debian supports
over a dozen architectures with all kinds of configurations which is
why initrd is so crucial.
In your specific case my opinion is (and it is an *opinion*) that the
real fault is in the linux-wlan-ng package. It does not provide
modules for the default powerpc kernel, and it does not seem to
compile cleanly for it either. You should not have had to build a
kernel, nor compile the modules. That is the real fault.
Let me put it this way: how many times did you have to compile the
Win9x or NT kernels, and build device drivers from source against the
kernel as a Windows admin? I'm presuming never, and Debian tries to do
its best to do the same. But Debian often depends on the *charity* of
its users and developers to get there.
You became a developer when you started compiling. Open source at
least gave you that *option* ;-) You could always go buy Yellow Dog
Linux or some other distribution with support (Mandrake, Redhat come
to mind) and not have to do any of this.
At any rate, I'll shut up about this from here on. But I'm curious:
did your card work? Did you figure out what it was that broke the
linux-wlan-ng modules from compiling? I hope you got those iMacs
working.
Cheers!
Shyamal
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