From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Jul 10 18:28:42 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id SAA03956 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 10 Jul 1996 18:28:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from time.cdrom.com (time.cdrom.com [204.216.27.226]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id SAA03951 for ; Wed, 10 Jul 1996 18:28:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from time.cdrom.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by time.cdrom.com (8.7.5/8.6.9) with ESMTP id SAA06098; Wed, 10 Jul 1996 18:27:43 -0700 (PDT) To: Joe Greco cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Some recent changes to GENERIC In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 10 Jul 1996 12:18:26 CDT." <199607101718.MAA25879@brasil.moneng.mei.com> Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 18:27:43 -0700 Message-ID: <6096.837048463@time.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > However, read my lips: NEWBIES ARE FRIGHTENED BY THE PROSPECT OF > RECOMPILING KERNELS AND OTHER GURUISH CRAP. It needs to work cleanly > out of the box if we are to have any market appeal. GENERIC probably > runs on 80% of all FreeBSD boxes out there, I would bet. Hey, I even > run GENERIC on some of my systems. It's convenient. It's flexible. > It's the default, too. Ok, Joe, I'm going to put back sio2 and sio3 for you, OK? But I'll also tell you that your argument above is more or less total crapola. Doing their own kernel build is HARDLY something that I'm even going to spare even a recognisable fraction of those users who will be forced in 2.1.5 to build their own kernels, whether or not sio2 and sio3 are back (you never owned a sound card, Joe?). I furthermore seriously doubt that most people will have 4 serial ports enabled for general use and your claims that the world is a 4-port place are entirely inconsistent with my own experience - I think you've fabricated facts rather wildly here in an attempt to support your case. In other words, I don't think it's going to make any truly TANGIBLE difference in the amount of trouble people go through with custom kernels, and your arguments miss the mark entirely if you think you've somehow saved the world by getting me to bring back two lousy serial devices. However, you seem to have a lot of passionate feelings where this is concerned so I'll tell you what: Do something genuinely meaningful about it rather than thinking that you've done your side of the argument proud simply by getting me to put two silly serial devices back. What would be meaningful? Write a kernel configuration front-end that does it all via configuration menus and popup dialog boxes, or set about finishing the infrastructure that Julian started in /usr/src/release to allow independant folks to easily build custom boot floppies for users with sound cards, frame grabbers, what have you. In short, direct all of those strong feelings in a more productive direction that genuinely moves us FORWARD on this issue and I'll say to myself "My my, so Joe Greco actually *does* put his money where his mouth is! I guess I was totally wrong about him being just yet another whining pedant!" :-) Jordan