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Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 09:34:14 -0600
From: Charles Cazabon <linux-kernel@discworld.dyndns.org>
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: CML2 design philosophy heads-up
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Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
> Arjan van de Ven <arjanv@redhat.com>:
> > Aunt Tillie doesn't even know what a kernel is, nor does she want
> > to. I think it's fair to assume that people who configure and
> > compile their own kernel (as opposed to using the distribution
> > supplied ones) know what they are doing.
> 
> I'd like to break these assumptions.  Or at the very least see how far
> they can be bent.  I know this sounds crazy to a lot of hackers, but 
> I think there's a certain amount of unhelpful elitism and self-puffery
> in the "kernels are hard to configure and they *should* be hard to 
> configure* attitude.  Let's give Aunt Tillie a chance to surprise us.

Whether this is desirable or not is debatable.  The big question is:  why on
earth would Aunt Tillie _want_ to compile a kernel at all, let alone
re-configure one?  If she's using Linux, she's installing her distribution's
pre-compiled kernel, and has no need for anything else.

Simplifying the configuration interface so that "anyone" can use it seems like
a waste of effort.  If there's an interested novice out there who wants to
learn how to configure a kernel, they'll be sufficiently interested to invest
an hour or two in learning how the whole process works.  Make it as simple as
it needs to be, and no simpler.

Charles
-- 
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Charles Cazabon                            <linux@discworld.dyndns.org>
GPL'ed software available at:  http://www.qcc.sk.ca/~charlesc/software/
Any opinions expressed are just that -- my opinions.
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