Feature Request

Kevin Freeman kfreem02 at comcast.net
Thu Jul 24 23:45:35 UTC 2003


Ethan Bonick wrote:
>>Jeremy Portzer wrote:
>>
>>
>>>But you have to be realistic about configuration tools.  If you are
>>>looking for a vast increase in the number of options, and thus the
>>>complexity, of basic things like filesystems, there will be an
>>>exponential increase in the codebase necessary for configuration
>>>tools.   There are only limited resources available.   As linuxconf
>>>demonstrated, you have to be REALLY good at writing configuration
>>>tools, or you end up with a big mess.
>>
>>Have you looked at anaconda code?  It _already_ contains code to handle
>>the requested filesystems, unless it was recently ripped out.  The GUI
>>just hides that fact from the end user.
>>
> 
> 
> Why bother putting it in if you are going to hide it?
> 

Now that is the $6 million question.  From past responses I gather that 
the reason is that Red Hat utterly despises everything except ext2/3. 
And now they have even stopped including kernel modules for the other 
filesystems on the install CDs, making the "workaround" even harder. 
What once required a simple "linux reiserfs" at the boot prompt now 
requires 2 more steps: build a new boot kernel with needed fs modules, 
and build a new boot CD containing the newly-built kernel.  I wonder how 
many users will switch to other distros rather than taking the 
opportunity to learn how to build a custom install CD?

... but I'm not bitter ...   OK, maybe just a little. :)

Kevin





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