*BSD News Article 96726


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From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: XTERM Problems
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 1997 12:20:42 -0700
Organization: Walnut Creek CDROM
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To: mayd@cygnus.uwa.edu.au
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David May wrote:
> majority of users. I do not have any figures but I would be surprised if
> less than 90% of FreeBSD kernels are used in a desktop configuration.

Prepare to be surprised.  Most FreeBSD systems are *not* deployed on the
desktop.

In any case, it's irrelevant since, as I said earlier, GENERIC is
supposed to represent the LCD of configurations, not the most popular,
and I'm not about to tailor it to a network server configuration any
more than I am a desktop one.

> Is it not possible to distribute alternative kernels for some of the more
> common configurations i.e. desktop, on the CD-ROM distributions and let the
> user select one during installation?

I suppose it's possible, but then I'd surely come under fire for not
making them exactly what each and every desktop user wanted ("move this
parameter up, it'll be a much better default!" "no, no, move it down!  I
don't have enough memory for your elitist defaults!").  A far better
idea is to simply get users used to the idea of configuring their own
kernels, and if that process is too hard then we need to make kernel
configuration easier, not increase the number of canned kernels.

As someone else already said, this isn't Linux. ;-)

-- 
- Jordan Hubbard
  FreeBSD core team / Walnut Creek CDROM.