Better packaging for older hardware?

[M. Fioretti]

On Sat, Oct 18, 2003 10:05:41 at 10:05:41AM -0400, Michael K. Johnson (johnsonm at redhat.com) wrote:
> It wouldn't be hard for us to provide an appropriately trimmed
> config file in the kernel srpm

Please do it! This would be an excellent solution. RULE and similar
projects could create the RPMs with the confidence that they have been
reviewed by expert, and that the resulting kernel would have the
highest probabilities to work fine with fedora libraries and userland
packages. At the same time, FC would not see uninteresting packages
added.

> 
> However, the only "slimming" bits we have expertise of any sort in
> is summed up in the BOOT kernel config file, so we'd need a pretty
> good idea of what kinds of changes we were going to make that would
> really satisfy most everyone...  That's the real hard part.
> 

Maybe is not so hard. Once we have agreed on the procedure above,
whenever we at RULE find or are told some other trick we'll pass along
it here and/or the srpms maintainers, maybe after testing them
ourselves: In this way, everybody would know it, even if not
immediately interested, and you would know how to further patch that
special .config file whenever the official FC kernel is updated.

When it comes to "what would really satisfy everyone" it might be even
simpler. As far as I can see, today everybody who needs to run a Red
Hat/Fedora distro on low end hardware:

1) does it himself, for fun and profit, or
2) is already involved/using RULE, or
3) is told to go try RULE

(I'm just summing up the current situation, not pretending to
establish any kind or monopoly/hegemony: this is just what I see from
where I sit. So far, almost everybody passing through point 3) because
1) was above his possibilities:

       ended up happily in point 2), or
       changed distro altogether because eventually no Red Hat
       lookalike would not fit his bill)

In other words, you might look at the RULE requirements, and just go
for them. Specifically, a good starting point are these urls:

http://www.rule-project.org/en/en/what_can_rule_do.php (use cases)
http://www.rule-project.org/en/test/                   (the kind of HW
we need to make useful)

I have to leave now, but will be happy to provide whatever further
feedback you might need.

The corner case(s) we could safely ignore is somebody who just needs
to use some extremely weird piece of NON-standard very old hardware,
only 100 units still existing on the whole planet, which requires more
patching of the kernel. Nobody can do miracles.

Ciao,
	Marco Fioretti


-- 
Marco Fioretti                 m.fioretti, at the server inwind.it
Red Hat for low memory         http://www.rule-project.org/en/

The whole world is a tuxedo and you are a pair of brown shoes.
                -- George Gobel