Re: Outstanding pre-production issues and next dev. cycle...

Werner Almesberger (almesber@lrc.epfl.ch)
Thu, 7 Mar 1996 15:59:46 +0100 (MET)


> There is a bigger issue of boot floppies, modules, on-line configuration,
> but we will leave that to 1.5. Right?

Well, I'm certainly biased, but I hope that at least bzImage+initrd will
be part of 1.4/2.0, for the following reasons:

- bzImage is needed for larger kernels. Some people are already getting
too many complaints from gunzip about memory shortage, and kernels
are growing ...
- bzImage also resolves a few problems with LOADLIN and W95
- initrd gives distributors a lot more flexibility for their initial
system bringup process
- initrd will probably find some other interesting uses, e.g. for
heterogenous large sites

Since many people will want to stay at 1.4/2.0 (like many did and still
do at 1.2), this may easily lead to some "unofficial standard patch",
which has unpleasant maintenance properties for distributors and for
users who want to rebuild the kernel.

bzImage+initrd don't touch too many other areas of the system, so I
think there'd be more than enough time to stabilize it in 1.3.

- Werner

-- 
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