I'm not talking about building every module under the sun... I'm talking about ditching what my distro gives me. What does it hurt to have PCI SCSI support on my laptop? I'm using more RAM?!?!? I'm using 320MB of my 1GB.
I've got Firefox running with about a dozen tabs. I've got a few gnome-terminals going. VMWare is running with my grotesque parasite XP VM booted. Oh, and a Zimbra integrated Thunderbird/Lightning is my mail client being used to type this.
Where's my incentive to drop the PCI SCSI modules? To me, the idea that I might not have the support for a device I need outweighs the savings of RAM that I don't even need.
There are very smart guys that have a job of selecting the most likely hardware that people will have on their systems. Those very smart people have a better guess as to what I'm going to run into than I do... I trust that.
Do I see your side, sure. Am I looking for a fight, nope. I'm just exploring the logic of it.
Mike K. Chuck Stickelman wrote:
Michael K. wrote:Yeah, I get that. What I mean, is why would I build only to my hardware. As was talked about elsewhere, one of the beauties of linux is that when you change platforms you don't need to reload.Reloading an OS/Distribution is TOTALLY different than adding a few modules here or there. When someone builds a kernel - you, me, someone from Ubuntu - thatperson has to decide what hardware support to build into the package. When it came to USB printers I mistakenly thought I'd never need it.For a laptop building only the features that's built onto the motherboard is reasonable, then add the peripherals you might need/want. The alternative would be to build everything under the sun. I guess mypoint there is why?On that same line, why would you want to build such a slim ammount of hardware support. I just don't understand. The decent reason I've heard as a reason for building kernels is to get the most recent kernel instead of letting your distro package it for you. Other than that, what do I get.A chance to choose. You can choose what you want to support and what not. Be careful not to exclude something you'll want when you're in some public forum! :)Some say that performance is gained... from everything I've read on this I disagree.If you're building a bunch of things into a kernel statically, then you'll be wasting some RAM and opening yourself to some quirkiness's if any of the drivers aren't solid.Some say security. Again, if they're adding hadware they've got physical access... so they own the machine. I am just looking for some logical reason to limit what hardware my machine supports.Look, if you want to build your own kernel, then do it and add support for EVERYTHING possible. Make all that you can modules and then explain how good you feel about having >90% of them never get used. What's the point in that? Here's a real example for my laptop. I can guarantee that I will NEVER install a PCI SCSI card of ANY flavor in my laptop. Why would I want PCI SCSI support? Now, I *may* want a PCMCIA/PCCARD SCSI device at some point in time. Maybe. So now I have to choose whether or not I should build that as a module. If I do and never use it, ok. If I don't and I end up needing it in the future I can always compile the module.YES, I usnderstand the need of needing to compile my own kernel modules. I'm the proud user of a laptop with an AIT video card, and for a long time I needed to compile my own kernel module. I understand the requirements of adding support for new hardware. Mike K.Chuck
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