[gentoo-amd64] Re: Re: modules

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Steve Herber posted <Pine.LNX.4.64.0511041314570.1239@thing.com>,
excerpted below,  on Fri, 04 Nov 2005 13:25:20 -0800:

> This is why I miss RedHat.  I don't want to spend my time customizing
> a kernel then spending more time with trial and error getting just the
> kernel I need.  RedHat has a system in place that installs a minimal
> kernal and then loads almost everything else as modules.  Genkernel almost
> does what I want but it is always a struggle.  The base system always
> loads all the different disk drivers and does not unload the unused ones.
> Is anyone working on a more RedHat like kernel/modules/runtime loading
> system?  It would eliminate the problem the original poster had and save
> lots of time for the rest of us.

If you don't want to spend your time customizing, why in tarnation did you
choose /Gentoo/, of /all/ distributions?  Customization is  practically
Gentoo's middle name, the reason we spend all that time compiling from
source and etc.

Red Hat and their method of pigeonholing everybody into convenient
categories, the better to provide binaries for them... I think you'll find
very few Gentoo developers interested in going that route... or they'd not
be Gentoo developers, and would be spending their time on some other
distribution (Debian's the closest in spirit to Gentoo that does binaries
by default).

Not to be unwelcoming, but honestly, if you're missing that sort of
top-down other-people controlling your machine for you environment, than
Gentoo is very likely the wrong distribution for you!  There are others
that provide that sort of thing far better than Gentoo, which is pretty
much the antitypical distribution, if that's what you are looking for.

OTOH...  Gentoo users are system-admins, and that's what it expects them
to be -- ready to take responsibility and control over their own machines.
While it's certainly possible for someone to take pretty much the
genkernel defaults, and have an acceptable system, part of becoming a
mature Gentoo user (that is, a mature sysadmin on a system running Gentoo
Linux) is learning the ins and outs of kernel customization, to the degree
you want to customize it.  If you are comfortable with it remaining as is,
that's fine, but the ability and tools are there to become familiar with
your system, and customize the kernel, as well as everything else, to the
degree of lean mean computing machine, you desire.

I sincerely hope you do not take this wrong, but your comment did hit a
nerve, as I'm sure you can tell, by now.  =8^/

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


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